Proper 16, Year A (Sermon at the 8 am Mass)

Ruins of the Temple of Pan, Caesarea Philippi

Matthew 16:13-20

A reciprocal identification takes place in today’s Gospel. Peter identifies Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Living God; and Jesus in turn identifies Peter as the Rock on which he will build his Church.

Our Lord and his disciples have just arrived in the region of Caesarea Philippi. This town was located in the very north of Galilee, near the foot of Mount Hermon, in the area known today as the Golan Heights. Its older name was Paneas, because its predominant landmark was a shrine to the god Pan, about which I shall say more presently.

Here Our Lord asks his disciples, “Who do men say that the Son of Man is?” (Jesus typically referred to himself as the Son of Man, a phrase that seems simply to have meant “human being.”) The initial answers are intriguing. “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

By this time, John the Baptist is already dead. Yet Matthew’s Gospel reports that when King Herod heard about the fame of Jesus, he said to his servants, “This is John the Baptist, who has been raised from the dead; this is why these powers are at work in him.” So the rumor that Jesus was John the Baptist returned from the dead was already circulating in high places.

As for Elijah, many Jews believed that Elijah would return as the messenger sent to prepare the way for the Messiah. This belief was based on a verse in the Book of Malachi, “Behold I will send you Elijah the Prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes.”

And as for Jeremiah or one of the prophets, many Jews were expecting a figure called “the Prophet.” This expectation was based on the parting words of Moses to the Hebrews: “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you—him shall you heed.”

John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah or one of the prophets: all interesting speculations as to Jesus’ identity, but all falling short of the truth. So, he asks the disciples: “But who do you say that I am?” Speaking up on behalf of the rest, Simon Peter replies, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”

The title “Christ” in English comes from the Greek word Christos, which in turn translates the Hebrew Messiah, which means simply “Anointed One.” Contrary to what many of us grew up thinking, “Christ” is not our Lord’s surname, but rather his title. To call him “Jesus Christ” amounts to calling him “Jesus the Messiah,” or “Jesus the Anointed One.”

The Jews of New Testament times were expecting God to send a Messiah or Anointed One as the agent of God’s kingdom on earth. When the Messiah came, he would defeat God’s enemies and inaugurate a universal reign of justice and peace.

As Christians, we believe that Jesus was the Messiah, though his exercise of the messianic office was very different from what the Jews of his time was expecting. So he congratulates Peter for his answer. “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.”

Then he continues: “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the powers of hell shall not prevail against it.” Here Jesus is indulging in a bit of wordplay. In Greek – the language in which the New Testament is written – the name Peter, Petros, is similar to the word for rock, petra. And remarkably, the same is true in Aramaic, the language that Jesus was speaking, where both the name Peter and the word for “rock” are the same, kepha.

Also, the literal translation of “the powers of hell” is “the gates of Hades.” Here we come back to the point I made earlier about Caesarea Philippi being the site of a temple of the Greek god Pan. An especially lecherous deity, Pan had the head, torso, and arms of a man but the legs, hindquarters, and horns of a goat. His worshippers engaged in orgiastic rituals involving lewd practices best left unmentioned.

At the present-day site of Caesarea Philippi, the ruins of the temple of Pan can be seen on an outcropping of rock overlooking the town. Directly behind the temple rises a 100-foot cliff, in which opens out a great gaping entrance to a cave. Pagan worshipers believed that such caves were gates to the underworld, Hades. (For them, Hades was not so much what Christianity later came to depict as Hell, as simply the abode of the dead: a dreary world in which the departed spirits took the form of pathetic shadows of their former selves.)

With a little imagination, then, we can picture Jesus and the disciples arriving in the environs of Caesarea Philippi, and seeing the rocky hillside with its temple, and its cave believed to be one of the gates of the underworld. Over and against such temples built on physical rocks, Jesus declares that Peter and, by extension, the other apostles are the rock on which he will build his Church – in Greek, his ecclesia, or assembly – against which the gates of Hell itself would not prevail.

So far as I’m aware, this is the one and only time the Gospels depict the presence of Jesus and his disciples – if only by implication – in the vicinity of pagan shrines and temples. Such centers of idolatrous worship and debauched religious practices would have been deeply offensive to their monotheistic Jewish sensibilities.

Yet perhaps it’s especially appropriate that here, of all places, Peter should confess Jesus to be the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of the Living God; and that Jesus in turn should name Peter the Rock upon whom he will build the Church against which even the gates of Hell shall not prevail. Already they are the advance guard of a movement of the Spirit that will sweep away all such false worship by the power of God’s truth.

The Roman historian Plutarch relates an incident that took place during the reign of Tiberias – who was Emperor from 14 to 37 AD, a period largely overlapping with the life of Jesus. A sailor, Thamus, was sailing from Greece to Italy, when he heard a divine voice calling over the waters, “The Great God Pan is dead.”

Christian apologists from Eusebius of Caesarea to John Milton to G.K. Chesterton have symbolically interpreted this proclamation of the death of Pan as coinciding with the birth of Christ. But I like to imagine that it coincided instead with this exchange between Jesus and Peter within sight of Pan’s shrine at Caesarea Philippi: “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God;” and “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

Proper 15, Year A

Matthew 15:21-28

One of the treasures of the Anglican liturgical tradition is the prayer we say together every Sunday just before Holy Communion: the Prayer of Humble Access (sometimes affectionately known as “the Humble Grumble”). “We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteous, but in thy manifold and great mercies.”

But some people find the second sentence of the prayer problematic. “We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table.” On one or two occasions, I’ve had parishioners complain that they find this line demeaning. Doesn’t respect for human dignity require us to acknowledge the inherent worthiness of all people to sit at the table, let alone forage around underneath it? Today, indeed, a great many Episcopal churches display welcome signs proclaiming, “There’s a place for you at the table.”

The key point that we’re apt to overlook, however, is that the sentence, “We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table” alludes to todays’ Gospel. In response to Jesus telling the Canaanite woman, “It is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs,” she answers, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” So, to understand what’s really going on when we recite the Prayer of Humble Access, it helps first to understand what’s going on in this rather odd exchange between our Lord and the Canaanite woman.

Jesus and the disciples have entered the region of Tyre and Sidon in what is today Lebanon. When this Canaanite woman starts crying out to him to heal her demon-possessed daughter, he’s initially silent and unresponsive. His disciples beg him to send her away; and he declares, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.” Then, when she kneels before him and begs for his help, he seems not only to rebuke but to insult her: “It is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”

Biblical commentators have spilled oceans of ink trying to explain – and in some cases to explain away – his apparent rudeness to the woman. But his statement is best understood in light of what he’s already just said: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Those words open up deep questions. At bottom, our discomfort with the story stems from what’s sometimes called "the scandal of particularity." That’s shorthand for the difficulty many people experience with the idea that God chooses to work through certain specific individuals and peoples, and not others, in furthering his purposes in the world and carrying out his plans within history.

Yet the rest of Matthew’s Gospel indicates that during his earthly life our Lord understood his mission in precisely these terms. He begins his missionary charge to the twelve apostles with the instructions, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Only after his Resurrection does he expand the mission by telling them: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations …”

In my priestly ministry I’ve discovered that when I’m faced with competing demands on my time and attention, it’s necessary to sort out my priorities. At any given point in time, I could be doing many different things, all equally important and worthwhile. Yet trying to do everything would result in accomplishing nothing. One useful test is to ask the question: How well would acting on this suggestion serve to advance the specific mission of this parish or to fulfill my specific vocation as a priest? I certainly don’t claim always to get the answer to that question right. Far from it. But it’s the right question to ask. And before one can even begin to try to answer it, one needs a clear sense of one’s own mission and calling.

Well, our Lord did have a clear sense of his mission and calling. For the time being at least, he’d been sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. So, confronted by a Gentile woman from outside Israel claiming his time, attention, and energy, the substance of his response isn’t all that unreasonable: Sorry, I can’t do everything; and this just isn’t part of what I’ve been sent to do. Beyond that, he doesn’t owe her anything, and he says as much.

Why, then, does he relent in the end and grant her request? We could chalk it up to her courage, persistence, and wit, as many commentators do. But I think that we can go one step further. Her response – “even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table” – displays enormous insight into the mystery of God’s election of the Jews in relation to Gentiles such as herself. She reminds Jesus that the ultimate purpose of his mission to the lost sheep of the house of Israel is precisely to enable Israel to fulfill its vocation of being a light to the nations. Moreover, our Lord’s mission to Israel lays the groundwork for the Church’s mission to the world. Then the dogs – that is, the Gentiles – will indeed be fed by the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.

One problem is that contemporary church people reading this Gospel tend to identify with Jesus and the disciples and derive a message about how we need to be more inclusive and accepting of outsiders. But the real force of the story hits us only when we realize that we are the outsiders. The beauty and power of the Prayer of Humble Access is that it reminds us that the characters in the story with whom we’re to identify are precisely the dogs.

We are, after all, most of us Gentile Christians. God chose the Jews first. They’re the children who have the first place at God’s table. Any place we may have at (or for that matter under) that table is secondary and derivative – it comes to us through Israel and through Jesus, the Jewish Messiah.

Jesus doesn’t owe us anything, just as he didn’t owe the Canaanite woman anything. We have no claim to a place at God’s table on the basis of any inherent worthiness or merit of our own. Yet our Lord granted the Canaanite woman’s request on account of her great faith. And insofar as he grants us anything that we seek from him, it can only be on account of our faith and trust in his mercy, and nothing else.

Proper 9, Year A

Romans 7:15-25a
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Today, on Sunday in the weekend of our national Independence Day, it seems appropriate to reflect a bit on the meaning of freedom.

Contemporary society tends to define freedom in purely negative terms as the absence of external restraints on our thoughts, speech, and behavior: the ability to say and do whatever we want without having to answer to anybody. When I was a teenager, I waged a relentless war of independence against parents, teachers, and all the other adults in my life who wanted to curb my freedom to smoke, drink, go out without saying where I’d be, and stay out as late as I wanted. This negative drive to free oneself of all accountability is typically adolescent; and sooner or later most of us get over it.

But freedom also has a positive meaning. Imagine a young woman who’s known from the fifth or sixth grade that she wants to be a lawyer. Pursuing her chosen profession entails years of grinding study to get good grades in high school, college, and law school, until she finally passes the bar exam, lands a job in a law firm, and gets started on her career. And that’s only the beginning. For her, freedom is the ability to fulfill her calling. But notice that this type of freedom severely restricts her liberty to do whatever she wants whenever she wants. 

For most of us, at least, when you've got an exam in the morning, you can't go out on the town. If the opposite of freedom is servitude, then all those years of college and law school are a kind of servitude, which leads to a greater freedom. The founding fathers of this country knew well that freedom is costly; it requires enormous discipline and sacrifice – without which they never would have won the War of Independence.

In the Christian understanding of the word, true freedom is the ability to serve God in this life and to enjoy him forever in the next. What keeps us from this freedom is not so much any earthly king, governor, legislature, or magistrate, as the spiritual force known as sin. 

Of course, much of our culture thinks of sin itself as a form of freedom. So many petty rules of morality seem to have no other purpose than keeping us from having fun and being happy. But that’s not what sin means at all in the biblical worldview. It’s something much deeper and more insidious than just breaking the rules. In today’s epistle reading, Saint Paul describes sin as a form of spiritual slavery. Its power is such that even though we know and want to do the right thing, we end up doing what we hate. Sin catches us up in patterns of dysfunctional and self-destructive behavior, from which, try as we may, we cannot break free by our own efforts. Understood this way, sin is the very opposite of freedom. True freedom is freedom from sin: the freedom to know God, to worship, love, serve, and obey him, and finally to become fully the men and women that he created us to be.

In today's Gospel, Jesus shows us the path to this freedom when he says, "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." Here, the word “yoke” refers to a wooden beam placed over the neck of an ox or mule. The harness on the animal is fastened to the yoke, which is in turn connected to a cart or a plow. So, when you put a yoke on an animal you subject it to your control, and make it work to serve your purposes.

In ancient world, the yoke was also a symbol of political servitude. Slaves were said to be under the yoke of their masters. The Jews spoke of themselves as being under the "yoke" of Roman rule, from which they longed to be free.

In the ancient world, moreover, a yoke referred not only to a contraption for harnessing animals, but also to a cross beam laid on the backs of prisoners for a forced march. So, Jesus took his yoke upon him, when he carried the cross the road to Calvary. So for Jesus, the words, “Take my yoke upon you...” are really another form of his invitation, “Take up your cross, and follow me.”

True freedom is costly; it requires sacrifice. We Christians believe that our freedom from sin and death has been won by Christ’s own sacrifice of himself on the cross. And we in turn receive and grow into this freedom by taking up our cross and following him.

So, our choice really is between two servitudes: to sin, or to Christ. Like a yoke, the Christian life subjects our unruly desires and passions to God's will. When we take the yoke of Christ upon ourselves, we renounce our liberty to serve our own pride, greed, and ambition. We renounce our freedom to do whatever we feel like simply because we feel like it. Conversely, we oblige ourselves to do whatever God asks us to do even when it's the very last thing we feel like doing.

The yoke of Christ is none other than the cross. Yet, paradoxically, Jesus says, "My yoke is easy and my burden is light." What can he possibly mean by this? Well, on another occasion he criticizes the scribes and Pharisees, and says that they "make up heavy loads and pile them on the shoulders of others but will not themselves lift a finger to ease the burden." By contrast, our Lord's yoke and burden are easy because he shares them with us. When we take up our cross, Jesus is right there, shouldering the burden with us, making it light and easy to bear. Indeed, were he not there, its weight would crush us.

In the end, our choice between the yoke of sin and the yoke of Christ is not unlike the alcoholic's choice between the yoke of the bottle and the yoke of abstinence. One leads to darkness and destruction, the other to light and life. One leads to slavery, the other to freedom.

So, on this weekend of our national Independence Day, we remember that true freedom does not mean merely the ability to do whatever we want whenever we want. Rather, it consists in the ability to serve God in this world and to enjoy him forever in the next. This freedom cost our Lord nothing less than the cross to liberate us from the power of sin and death. It costs us everything as well when we take up our cross and follow him. Yet, Jesus promises us, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” And only by taking his yoke upon us do we attain that perfect freedom which consists in the love and service of Almighty God.

Saint Peter and Saint Paul (at the 10 o'clock Mass)

Even though they share the same Feast Day, Saints Peter and Paul couldn’t have been more different from each other. Peter was a native of Galilee in the land of Israel. Paul was a Jew of the Diaspora, from Tarsus in Asia Minor. Peter was from the country; Paul was from the city. Peter most likely spoke Aramaic as his first language, while Paul spoke and wrote in Greek. Peter was by all accounts a simple fisherman without much formal schooling. Paul was a highly educated Jewish rabbi, and a Roman citizen as well.

The differences don’t stop there. Peter had known Jesus personally during his earthly ministry. Paul knew only the risen Christ, whom he met on the road to Damascus when he was blinded by a great light and heard the Lord speak to him. Peter was the leader of the twelve apostles, while Paul had a very different vocation as Apostle to the Gentiles.

There were also moments of tension between them. In his Letter to the Galatians, Paul recounts that he once confronted Peter to his face in Antioch for drawing back from eating with Gentile converts when he had previously done so.

For all their differences, however, Peter and Paul had much in common. For one things, they both received new names. Paul grew up with the name Saul, and appears to have started using the name Paul after his conversion and baptism. Likewise, Peter was originally known as Simon, and received from Jesus the Aramaic name Cephas, or “Rock,” which in turn translates into Greek as Petros or Peter.

Neither was perfect. Both committed actions that they long regretted. On the night of Jesus’ betrayal and arrest, Peter three times denied being one of his followers. (Incidentally, in today’s Gospel, the point of Jesus asking Peter three times, “Do you love me?” is to give Peter the opportunity to undo his earlier triple denial.) Paul similarly considered himself the greatest of sinners, for before his conversion he had persecuted the Church of God, even standing by and looking on with approval during the stoning of our patron saint, Stephen, the first Christian martyr.

What Peter and Paul have most in common, perhaps, is that Christian tradition is virtually unanimous that they both spent their last days in the city of Rome. Their joint commemoration on June 29th, which dates to the middle of the third century, is based on the memory that they both died in the same persecution, around the year 64 AD.

The New Testament tells us little about the circumstances of either Apostle’s death. The Acts of the Apostles records Paul’s final journey to Rome to be tried and judged as a Roman citizen. But Acts concludes with Paul living in Rome under house arrest with members of the local Christian community visiting him freely and unhindered. Beyond that, Paul’s Second Letter to Timothy alludes his coming death in the well-known words, “I am already on the point of being sacrificed; the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”

The New Testament tells us even less about the later life of Saint Peter. Tradition holds that Peter served for a time as bishop of Antioch before finally making his way to Rome. There is, of course, the poignant passage at the end of John’s Gospel in which Jesus foretells the manner of Peter’s death: “Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go.” (This he said to show by what death he was to glorify God.)
In any case, both Peter and Paul appear to have been residing in Rome when an event of momentous consequences took place in the year 64 during the reign of the Emperor Nero. On July 18th of that year, the Great Fire broke out and raged for five days, destroying large parts of the city.

To deflect rumors that he’d started the fire himself – either in a fit of madness or as part of plan to clear space for his building projects – Nero accused the city’s growing population of Christians of having done so. According to the Roman historian Tacitus, the authorities rounded up a vast multitude of Christians. He writes: “Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.”

According to the apocryphal Acts of Peter, when the persecution broke out, Peter started to make his escape from the city along the road known as the Appian Way. But he met Jesus coming towards him, again wearing the crown of thorns and carrying the cross. Astounded, Peter asked, “Domine, quo vadis?”—“Lord, where are you going?” To which Jesus responded, “I am going to Rome to be crucified again.”

Upon hearing that, Peter knew that he had to return to Rome, come what may. Upon being arrested and sentenced to death by crucifixion, he requested to be crucified upside down, declaring himself unworthy to suffer the same death as his Savior. His body was buried in the cemetery on the Vatican Hill, in the place over which the high altar of Saint Peter’s Basilica now stands.

Paul is believed to have died as a martyr in Rome at the same time, possibly even on the same day. Tradition has it that as a Roman citizen Paul was granted the privilege of a quick and relatively easy death by beheading, and that the execution occurred three miles south of Rome, at a place known as the Three Fountains. Paul’s body was buried nearby at the place over which now stands high altar of the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls.

Here in this church we have a depiction of Saints Peter and Paul in the two stained glass windows in the apse to the right of the high altar. The prominent placement of those windows makes a powerful visual statement that the faith that we believe, practice, and teach here in this parish must be none other than the same faith taught by Saints Peter and Paul: the faith once delivered to the saints and handed down from generation to generation to our own day in the Church. Today, then, we ask Saint Peter and Saint Paul to pray for us, that God may grant us grace, strength, and courage to persevere in this faith until our life’s end.

Proper 8, Year A (at the 8 o'clock Mass)

Matthew 10:40-42

Today at the 10 a.m. Mass we shall be celebrating the Feast of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Apostles and Martyrs at Rome. At this Mass, however, we keep the Proper of the Sunday – which, as it turns out, is closely related to Saints Peter and Paul precisely in that it emphasizes theme of apostleship.

This morning’s Collect is the one appointed for Proper 8, the Sunday closest to June 29. Let’s listen again to what it says:

O Almighty God, who hast built thy Church upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone: Grant us so to be joined together in unity of spirit by their doctrine, that we may be made an holy temple acceptable unto thee …

So, on the Sunday closest to the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, the Church prays that we may find our unity in the apostolic teaching, and so be built up into a holy temple acceptable to God. What’s more, the Collect for Proper 8 is used throughout the year at Votive Masses of the Holy Apostles.

What, then, are apostles? The Greek noun apostolos comes from the verb apostellō, “to send,” and simply means “one who is sent.” The apostles are those whom the Lord sends.

Today’s Gospel comes at the end of a long discourse in Chapter 10 of Saint Matthew's Gospel in which Jesus sends the Twelve Apostles out on a mission to the cities, towns, and villages of Israel. It begins with Jesus calling them and giving them authority to cast out unclean spirits and to heal every disease and every infirmity. Then he charges them to go out preaching that the kingdom of heaven is at hand, taking nothing with them but the clothes on their backs. They must thus rely completely on the hospitality of those to whom they are sent.

As for those who offer them such hospitality, at the beginning of today’s Gospel, Jesus declares, “He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me.” The underlying Jewish concept here is that of a shaliah, a Hebrew word meaning a legal emissary, representative, or agent. The key characteristic of a shaliah is that he is empowered to speak and act in the name of the sender so that in dealing with the shaliah one is virtually dealing with the sender himself.

Now, it just so happens that the standard Greek translation of shaliah is apostolos, or “apostle.” In the New Testament, the apostles are those whom Christ has sent into the world, empowered to act in his name and with his authority. On this basis, he tells them: “He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me.” An apostle is thus not only one who has been sent, but is also a representative person, one in whom the sender is virtually present. When we receive the apostle, we receive the one who sent him.

This basic idea grounds the doctrine of apostolic succession. That is, just as Christ sent the apostles into the world in his name, so the apostles eventually transmitted their authority – to preach, to administer the Sacraments, and to govern the Church – to their successors, namely the bishops. And by means of prayer and the laying-on-of-hands, the bishops of the early Church transmitted this authority to their successors, and so on, down through the centuries to the present day.

When I was ordained to the priesthood, twenty-one years ago, I knelt before my bishop as he prayed and laid his hands on my head, and I received the commission to preach the Gospel and administer the Sacraments as a priest of the Church. But I wasn’t receiving this commission from the bishop per se – or from the local congregation, or even from the Diocese or the Episcopal Church – but ultimately from Christ himself, via a long line of bishops going back to the first apostles.

Similarly, when we receive the bishop in this church, as we shall have the privilege of doing this Fall, we are receiving not merely the Chief Executive Officer of the Diocese, but rather a successor of the apostles, one sent to us by Christ as his emissary, and in whom Christ himself is virtually present in our midst.

By the Sacrament of Holy Orders, bishops, priests, and deacons are the public representatives of Christ in the Church today. Deacons represent Christ the Servant; priests represent Christ the Great High Priest, and Bishops represent Christ the Chief Shepherd.

This is emphatically not to say that ordained ministers infallible or perfect; on the contrary, we are all profoundly unworthy of such a high calling. It is to say that despite our many imperfections and shortcomings, Christ has promised to be present and active in his Church through those whom he has called and sent.

But it doesn’t end there. Through the Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, and the Eucharist, Christ calls all Christians and sends us into the world in his Name. The reason why God calls some of us into Holy Orders is precisely to build up, strengthen, and equip the laity for their mission and ministries in the world.

So, in a manner corresponding to our many and varied vocations, Christ calls and sends each one of us. As the members of his Body, the Church, we are an apostolic people: his representatives and emissaries in the world. And to each of us alike, Christ addresses his words in today’s Gospel: “He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me.”

Meditations on the Way of the Cross -- First Station: Jesus is Condemned to Death

Friday 7 March 2014

During these six Friday evenings of Lent, I want to reflect on some themes associated with certain stations in the traditional Way of the Cross. I begin this evening with the first Station: Jesus is condemned to death. The theme associated with this station is Judgment.

What kind of person is this Roman Procurator Pontius Pilate, who renders judgment on Jesus? Historians have offered widely varying assessments. Some have portrayed him as an honest and honorable military administrator doing his best to do the right thing under difficult circumstances. According to this version of the story, Pilate strongly suspects that Jesus is innocent and wants to let him off, but ultimately yields to the political pressure of the Jewish religious authorities and crowds who are seeking Jesus’ death.

Others dismiss that reading as a whitewash. Pilate, they argue, is a callous and cruel military governor who wouldn’t have given any more of a second thought to condemning an accused man than to brushing a fly off his arm – especially when the charge is subversion and treason. Those who take this line argue that by the time the Gospels were being written, the early Christians wanted to get along in the world of the Roman Empire, so it was in their interests to emphasize the responsibility of the Jewish religious authorities for insisting on the death of Jesus, while minimizing the role played by Pilate in imposing the death penalty.

The truth probably lies somewhere in between. That is a matter for historians to debate. In the end, it’s still Pilate’s decision. He bears the authority of judgment. And all four Gospels are unanimous in suggesting that Pilate makes his final decision in the interests not of truth or justice but of political expediency.

It’s just possible that Pilate initially hesitates to condemn Jesus just as the Gospels say. New Testament scholar N.T. Wright suggests that if the Jewish religious authorities were recommending this man’s execution, Pilate would on principle have tried to do the opposite of what they wanted: not out of any moral scruples regarding the truth of their accusations, but just to be difficult. But then Pilate capitulates when the Jewish authorities implicitly threaten to report the matter to Rome. If Pilate fails to condemn and execute someone accused of claiming to be the King of the Jews, then he’s no friend of Caesar.

The deep irony of the scene is that in presuming to condemn Jesus, Pilate is judging his own Maker and Judge. Just as Jesus stands now before Pilate, so in the Last Day the roles will be reversed. Then Pilate will stand before Jesus and have to render account for the judgment that he has here rendered.

Judgment is an inescapable dimension of human relations. Our choice is not between judging and not judging, but between judging badly and judging well. To have any meaningful interactions with other people, we need constantly to exercise our critical faculties, sizing up those with whom we have to deal, assessing their strengths and weaknesses, their virtues and shortcomings. And one of the key ingredients of good judgment is the humility borne of recognizing how often we ourselves so often fall short by the very same standards we use to judge others. Only in this way do we begin to gain the self-knowledge necessary to exercise good judgment.

What I like to call “the paradox of judgment” is that every time we render judgment we simultaneously render ourselves liable to judgment. This principle is illustrated by the story of the brash young American tourist who visited one of the great art museums in Italy. After breezing in the space of half an hour through galleries that often occupy other visitors for days, he remarked to the guard at the entrance: “Well I certainly don’t think much of your old masters.” Unfazed, the guard replied, “Yes sir, and they don’t think much of you either. However, it is not the old masters who are on trial here, but the viewers.”

The Dean of my seminary had a stock speech he used to give about student evaluations. Every year, a committee of the faculty would be convened to evaluate the progress of each of the seminarians, in consultation with the seminarian’s faculty advisor. They would then write a report of the evaluation, which would be sent to the seminarian’s bishop. In the third and final year, the evaluation would include the faculty’s recommendation for or against ordination.

Every year, however, at least a few seminarians would object to being evaluated and judged in this way. It seemed so unfair and, well, judgmental. Who were the faculty to judge them? Only God knew what was in their hearts. But, said the Dean, we all evaluate each other all the time. “From the moment you entered this seminary,” he continued, “you’ve all been evaluating and forming a cumulative judgment of me. And while your evaluations of me don’t have the immediate effect on my future that the faculty evaluations have on yours, nonetheless if enough of you form negative judgments of me in my role as Dean, there will be consequences I will have to face.”

We were all impressed, I think, by his honesty and humility. Here was a priest who presided over a process that systematically evaluated and judged people’s fitness for ordained ministry. Yet at the same time he acknowledged that in the very act of rendering judgment he was rendering himself liable to judgment by the very people it was his responsibility to judge, not to mention their bishops and standing committees, the seminary board of trustees, and so on.

Most of all, we need to remember that ultimately God is our judge. In rendering judgment on Jesus, Pilate was certainly aware that he was rendering himself liable to the judgment of Caesar if he failed to satisfy the demands of the local Jewish authorities. But he needed to be more worried about God’s judgment than Caesar’s.

In his essay “God in the Dock,” C.S. Lewis remarks that by the middle of the twentieth century, human beings had adopted an entirely new posture towards God. Ancient men and women, he writes, approached the divine as accused criminals approach their judge: confessing their sins and begging for mercy. For modern men and women, however, the positions are reversed. They have put themselves on the judge’s bench and God in the prisoner’s dock. They are quite kindly judges, Lewis continues, and if God has a reasonable explanation for being the sort of God who permits war, poverty, disease, and famine, they are prepared to give him a fair hearing, and possibly even acquit him. But, Lewis concludes, the important point is that we have made ourselves the judges and God is in the dock.

But of course that is the very scene we see anticipated two thousand years ago at the judgment seat in the place called the pavement, where Jesus stands before Pilate to be examined, tried, judged and condemned. In a sense, we all stand in the place of Pilate when we presume to judge God. If we presume to evaluate God, so God evaluates us. If we presume to question the Christian faith and find it wanting, so the Christian faith questions us and finds us wanting. If we presume to reject the Christian Church as a community worthy of our membership, so the Christian Church is liable to reject us as individuals worthy to be its members.

All this may seem a terrifying picture, and so it is. But God has the last word; and in Christ Jesus that word is not judgment and condemnation, but grace and forgiveness – made possible precisely by the condemnation that Christ undergoes for our sake before Pilate. In the first Station, Jesus stands before Pilate and accepts the judgment that will result in his death. In so doing, however, he makes it possible for us to stand before him as our Judge. He calls us now to repent of our sins and place our faith and trust in him. Then, at the last Judgment, we shall receive the verdict of forgiveness, acquittal, and life on account of the very death to which he was unjustly condemned.

Ash Wednesday -- Homily at the Evening Mass

This Ash Wednesday, a debate has been heating up over a practice implemented by some of my clergy colleagues, known as “Ashes to Go.” In the name of “taking the Church into the world,” and “meeting people where they are,” vested clergy and acolytes have for the past several years been taking to the streets to distribute ashes to passersby in public squares and on train platforms.

This year, however, there’s been a bit of pushback. Two days ago, for example, the Episcopal News Service ran an opinion piece by a priest with an extensive street ministry in Brooklyn, New York, questioning whether it’s really possible to make a good beginning of Lent by receiving your ashes on the fly between Starbucks and the morning’s first business meeting. Are such gimmicks, he asked, really an effective method of evangelism? Are there not more authentic ways of taking the Church’s ministry into the world?

Regardless of which side we come down on, the deeper value of the debate itself is that it compels us to look more closely at the symbolism of Ash Wednesday, to try to understand what it means. And here perhaps it’s appropriate to review some of the basics about the ashes.

A key point is that the ashes of Ash Wednesday are, in theological language, not a Sacrament but a sacramental. That is, they do not by themselves convey God’s grace in the way that, say, the water of Baptism does, or that the consecrated Bread and Wine of the Eucharist do. A sacramental, as distinct from a Sacrament, is an outward sign meant to reflect and express the inward dispositions of our hearts. It’s a reminder to us of what we need to be thinking, feeling, and doing.

In particular, the ashes of Ash Wednesday are meant to remind us of what we need to be about as we begin the Lenten Season. It came as a surprise to me several years ago to realize that even in the Roman Catholic Church, Ash Wednesday is not a Holy Day of Obligation. That is, it’s not a day when the faithful are expected to attend Mass as a requirement of membership in the Church. Numerous Masses are offered on Ash Wednesday, and the faithful are strongly encouraged to attend, but attendance is not a requirement in the same way as it is on certain other days, such as Christmas, All Saints, Ascension, and, for that matter, Sundays throughout the year.

What is required of the faithful on Ash Wednesday in the Church is that we observe the day “by special acts of discipline and self-denial.” (Those words are on page 17 in the Prayer Book.) The Church intends Ash Wednesday to be a time of fasting, prayer, almsgiving, and repentance, regardless of whether we come to Mass and receive our ashes, or not. The ashes remind us of our mortality so that we may devote ourselves to these practices in all seriousness of purpose, mindful that dust we are, and to dust we shall return.

With that background, we can return to the question of whether “Ashes to go” is an appropriate undertaking. You be the judge. I think that arguments can be made either way, for and against the practice. It’s not something I feel particularly called to do myself. Maybe others are.

The danger I see is that of encouraging people to receive the ashes superficially, or even superstitiously, as some sort of magic talisman conveying divine blessings apart from the day’s appointed disciplines of prayer, fasting, and repentance. For those who come to Mass to receive their ashes, the service itself – with its readings, psalms, and prayers of penitence – establishes the ritual context that helps shape the right dispositions for the day’s observance.

Be all that as it may, the important point is that we’ve gathered here this evening to receive our ashes and, I trust, to remain for the rest of service: Ashes to Stay! But we need to make sure that we receive them as a sign of our commitment to keep a good Lent by observing the disciplines of the season. If we’ve not already done so, we need to decide on a Lenten Rule – What shall we give up? What shall we take on? And then the ashes will be a sign to us, and to one another, of our common commitment to undertake this year’s Lenten journey together. 

Saint Michael and All Angels -- Sunday Sermon

Recently I’ve discovered the series of books called by the title of “Very Short Introductions.” Published by Oxford University Press, these compact little books offer brief, accessible, and yet substantial inroads into a wide variety of topics, academic disciplines, and fields of study. And they manage to do so without dumbing down the material.

It just happens that in the past month or so, I’ve had occasion to look at two of these Very Short Introductions: one on angels and the other on dinosaurs. The Very Short Introduction to Angels gives a fascinating account of beliefs about angels not only in the Bible but also in the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions, as well as the depictions of angels in the history of Western art, literature, and popular culture. And the Very Short Introduction to Dinosaurs has caught me up on developments in paleobiology, and theories about the evolution and extinction of the dinosaurs over the past forty-five years or so, since I last took an active interest in the subject at the age of about seven or eight.

So, in anticipation of today’s celebration, this juxtaposition of Very Short Introductions got me wondering: What, if anything, do angels and dinosaurs have in common? With a little reflection, more similarities come to mind than one might think at first.

Many dinosaurs are scary; and so are angels. Throughout Scripture, when an angelic messenger appears to a human being, the first thing he typically says is, “Do not be afraid” or “Fear not.” That indicates that most people's initial reaction to the manifestation of an angelic presence is sheer terror.

Both dinosaurs and angels are subject to elaborate systems of classification. The evolutionary charts of different classes of dinosaurs are complex, with many categories and subcategories with such names as saurischians, ornithischians, therapods, and sauropods. Likewise, mutatis mutandis, ancient thinkers classified the angels into complex ranks and hierarchies: seraphim, cherubim, thrones, dominions, virtues, powers, principalities, archangels, and angels.

But the most important similarity of all is that dinosaurs and angels are God’s creatures, just as we are; and more than that, they tend to relativize humanity’s place in God’s creation. Human beings emerged on earth as a recognizably distinct species approximately half a million years ago; and human culture began to have an identifiable material impact on the world about 10,000 years ago. By contrast, the dinosaurs first appeared 225 million years ago and then disappeared 65 million years ago – flourishing for a period of 160 million years in between.

To put those numbers into perspective, if we count the time that has elapsed since the dinosaurs first emerged as one year, then we human beings evolved about twenty hours ago – less than one day. And organic life on earth is much older still than the dinosaurs, having emerged according to most estimates 3.8 billion years ago.

We human beings are virtually new arrivals in the long timeline of the earth’s natural history. So, it’s a bit absurd to claim, as many traditional philosophies and religions have claimed, that God created the world just for us. God was delighting in his creation and the various life forms he created in it for billions of years before he brought us human beings on the scene.

The existence of angels brings home the same point in a different way. We human beings like to think of ourselves as the summit of creation in terms of self-awareness, intelligence, and the ability to shape our destinies by the exercise of free will. Yet the Church’s traditional teaching is that creation comprises not just the material world that we can see, but also a spiritual world that most of the time we cannot see. We profess this belief every Sunday in the first article of the Nicene Creed, which affirms that God is the creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. And, as purely spiritual creatures endowed with intelligence and free will, the angels constitute the invisible dimension of God’s creation.

Recent Christian theological reflection on the ecological crisis pinpoints one of the chief causes of environmental degradation as anthropocentrism – the belief that we human beings are the be-all and end-all of creation, and that the earth and all its creatures exist to serve us and our human needs. Those reflecting on these issues have proposed that, as a first step towards a solution, we need to replace this human-centered perspective with a creation-centered perspective. That is, we need to learn to see ourselves as placed not over but within the natural world, set in a web of relationships of mutual interdependence and reciprocity with all other creatures.

And the real upshot of my comparison of dinosaurs and angels is that they both effectively challenge our anthropocentrism by reminding us that there is so much more to God’s creation than impinges on our conscious awareness most of the time. The earth and the natural world have been around so much longer than we human beings have, and will likely continue long after we’re gone. And intelligent and creative as the human race undoubtedly is, the invisible world contains intelligences of far greater power and subtlety.

One of the peculiarities of our Western liturgical calendar in the Church is that all our great feasts and festivals focus on the mysteries of Redemption: Christmas, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, and all the saints’ days – combine to tell the story of what God has done to save us after our fall from grace and incurring of the guilt of Original Sin. By contrast, in modern times the Eastern Orthodox Church has started keeping September 1st as the “Day of Creation,” that is, as a day commemorating God’s work of creating heaven and earth in the first place, a creation that he pronounced “very good.”

Maybe in the Western Church we will eventually adopt this Festival of Creation as well. In the meantime, the closest thing we have is the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels, which is, in effect, a celebration of creation in its invisible and spiritual dimension. Today, then, we contemplate the vastness, beauty, complexity, and interdependence of all that God has made. We pray that just as God’s holy angels worship and serve God in heaven, so they may protect and defend us on earth. And we look forward in joyful hope to that glorious day when all of God’s creation – angels, dinosaurs, and all – will be gathered into that Kingdom of which there shall be no end.

Proper 16, Year C -- Sunday Sermon

Isaiah 58:9-14
Luke 10:13-17

In Episcopal Church circles, certain preachers, writers, and church leaders periodically assert that worship, what we do here on Sunday morning, is not the central focus of the Christian life. They argue instead that the essence of being a Christian involves what happens on the remaining six days of the week, where we’re called to do God’s work in the world by serving the poor, feeding the hungry, and healing the sick. This, they say, is what God really cares about.

Those making this argument then proceed to describe Sunday morning worship as an opportunity to regroup and recharge our batteries, so that we may receive in turn the spiritual motivation and energy to get back out there and do the work that God has given us to do.

In my academic work in Christian ethics, I often come across a distinction between instrumental value and intrinsic value. Something with instrumental value is a means-to-an-end, while something with intrinsic value is an end-in-itself. And much of the moral disorder in our contemporary world results from confusing these two types of value. Money, for example, has instrumental value: it is a means to other ends, and we get into trouble when we start treating it as an end-in-itself. People, on the other hand, have intrinsic value; and we get into trouble when we start treating them instrumentally, as means to other ends [such as money].

So, the argument that I’ve described basically approaches the Church's liturgy and sacraments instrumentally, as means to the end of living the Christian life defined in terms of good works in the world. But I want to suggest that this view is fundamentally short-sighted and incomplete. Worship is an activity of intrinsic value. Much as it may help us in other spheres of our life – and valuable as good works in the world undoubtedly are – worship is nonetheless worthwhile and necessary in its own right. It needs no other justification.

Our Old Testament reading from the Prophet Isaiah exemplifies this mindset. The Sabbath is a delight: a day not to go our own way or seek our own pleasure, but to delight in the Lord through worship and prayer.

But then we have the controversy in the Gospel reading between our Lord and the Ruler of the Synagogue. The Ruler of the Synagogue objects to Jesus healing a woman bent over from disease on the Sabbath; and Jesus rebukes him. At first glance, it might seem that our Lord is siding with those who argue that works of mercy are more important than worship.

What’s going on? The Ruler of the Synagogue is clearly not objecting to our Lord’s ministry of healing per se but to his healing on the Sabbath: the period that begins at sundown on Friday and ends at sundown on Saturday.

The Ruler is concerned above all with the community’s faithful observance of Torah, the Jewish Law. The Law is sacred: God’s gift to his people to enable them to become holy, a people set apart for himself. And a key litmus test of how well you keep the Law is how well you keep the Sabbath: a day set aside for worship, recreation, and rest, and emphatically not for work.

By our Lord’s time, the rabbis have begun to debate the question: Which activities constitute violations of the Sabbath and which do not? With respect to the treatment of injuries and healing of diseases, a particular distinction has gained widespread acceptance between what today we would call medical emergencies and chronic illnesses.

Providing treatment in response to a true emergency, such as a broken bone or an immediately life-threatening condition, does not violate the Sabbath. But chronic complaints are another matter. If someone has suffered from a debilitating disease for years, and is likely to continue suffering for years to come, then there’s no reason why intervention aimed at healing can’t wait another twenty four hours until the Sabbath is over. On this principle, the Ruler of the Synagogue declares: “There are six days on which work ought to be done. Come on those days and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day.”

It’s a well-thought-out and not unreasonable position. Yet Jesus forcibly takes issue with it, denouncing those who’ve criticized him as hypocrites. To understand why, we need to take a deeper look at the origins of the Sabbath itself.

The key text is Deuteronomy 5:15. In giving the commandment to keep holy the Sabbath day and do no work, God instructs Moses: “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out thence with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.”

In other words, the Sabbath originated as a celebration of the liberation of the Israelites from servitude under Pharaoh. Because the people have been freed from bondage, they must not enslave themselves to other gods – particularly the gods of wealth, power, and status, whose demands can become all-consuming. Setting aside a day on which no work is to be done is a sign of this liberation from false gods to enjoy the freedom to worship the one true God.

When Jesus is challenged for healing the bent-over woman of her infirmity, he replies: "And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day?" In other words, by liberating the woman from her disease, he has not violated the Sabbath but rather fulfilled its true and proper meaning: liberation from bondage. The Sabbath sets us free to join in the worship of God – and that is precisely what this woman does: "he laid his hands upon her, and immediately she was made straight, and she praised God."

In other words, to return to the language of instrumental value and intrinsic value: our Lord’s healing of the woman is not an end-in-itself but a means-to-an-end. The healing is an instrumental good which makes possible the intrinsic good of the woman’s re-integration into the community’s praises of God. Jesus does not come to the synagogue so that he can heal people on the Sabbath; rather, he heals people on the Sabbath so that they may resume their rightful place in the synagogue and its worship!

By extension, the argument that liturgy and worship are means to the end of enabling us more effectively to perform good works in the world gets the means-ends relationship precisely the wrong way round. The true end, goal, and glory for which we’ve been created is eternal life in God’s presence. What we do here in Church on Sunday morning is a foretaste of what we shall be doing in heaven for eternity: joining with all the angels and saints in adoration and praise of the Almighty. Everything else we do in this life is ordered towards that end. We feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, and heal the sick in the hope that in doing so we all may be set free to join ever more fully in the worship of God, both in this world and in the world to come.

Finding of the Relics of Saint Stephen -- Sermon at the 10 am Sunday Mass

As Christians, we have a definite orientation to time. We look forward to the future in hope for the coming of God’s Kingdom. And we look back to what God has done in the past as the grounds for this hope. This Christian looking back, this remembering, is not merely nostalgia for some bygone golden age, but rather how we prepare ourselves to meet God in the present and receive his promises for the future.

We remember the Christian past by reading the Bible. Every Sunday we gather to listen to the Scriptures. In the liturgy, we retell the ancient stories of patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs. We hear again the letters of the apostles to the Churches. We recount the words and deeds of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This public reading of the Scriptures shapes our corporate memory and identity as God’s people.

We remember the Christian past by sharing in the Sacraments. In English, the Holy Eucharist is called the memorial of Christ’s death and resurrection. But the Greek word for memorial, anamnesis, means something more like “making present” or “calling into our midst.”

Christian Eucharistic devotion rightly focuses on the change of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. But no less miraculous is the Eucharistic transformation of time. Both present and future are telescoped into one present moment, and we are there—at the Last Supper, at Calvary, at the empty tomb, in the upper room, and again at the great banquet that awaits us in God’s kingdom.

So, the two primary means of remembering the Christian past are God’s Word and God’s Sacraments. There are other means, secondary to be sure, but nonetheless of vital importance to Christian faith and devotion.

One such means is Christian art. When we walk into a church we often see paintings, statues, and stain glass windows depicting our Lord, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the saints. In the Eastern Christian tradition, icons are understood to be windows into heaven, portals through which their heavenly prototypes are made visually present in our midst.

Another means of Christian remembering is sacred music. Ancient Church music such as plainchant or polyphony offers us a sense of connectedness with all the generations of previous Christians who have worshipped and prayed with this same music. The same goes for church architecture. While it’s true that we can worship anywhere – including contemporary church buildings that look like conference centers – gothic and Romanesque church buildings particularly evoke a sense of the Christian past.

From very early times in church history—the fourth century if not before—Christians have remembered their past by visiting holy places such as Jerusalem where our Lord and his apostles lived and died. Everyone I’ve ever known who has visited the Holy Land says that you return able to visualize the stories in the Bible as never before, because you’ve been in the physical environment where they took place.

And we remember the Christian past by means of relics. We’re all familiar with relics whether we realize it or not. In the purely secular sense, a relic is simply any artifact associated with a particular person or event in history. The Smithsonian is full of relics of our national history, from the original Star-Spangled Banner that flew over Fort McHenry to the gowns worn by First Ladies at Presidential Inaugural balls. In the National Archives, visitors line up to view an original copy of the Declaration of Independence, set in a display case that resembles nothing so much as a sacred shrine. We treasure such secular relics because they visibly and tangibly connect us to our past as a people.

And then there are relics in the sense of human remains—chiefly bones. From the very earliest days, Christians have preserved the relics of the saints. The Bible attests that the Hebrews took great care to preserve the tombs of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In the Exodus, the Hebrews brought the bones of the Patriarch Joseph up out of Egypt, so that they could be buried in the Promised Land.

Evidence for the early Christian veneration of relics is found in the second century account of the martyrdom of Polycarp, the Bishop of Smyrna in Asia Minor. Convicted of the crime of being a Christian, Polycarp was burned at the stake. The eyewitness author writes: “we afterwards took up his bones which are more valuable than precious stones and finer than refined gold, and laid them in a suitable place; where the Lord will permit us to gather ourselves together, as we are able, in gladness and joy, and to celebrate the anniversary of his martyrdom …”

As early as the second century, then, Christians were gathering at the burial places of the martyrs to celebrate the Eucharist on the anniversaries of their deaths and possibly at other times as well.

After the legalization of Christianity in the early fourth century, great churches such as Saint Peter’s basilica in Rome were built over the sites of the tombs of the apostles. Relics of the saints were brought out of the catacombs and placed under the altars of newly constructed churches in other places. Indeed, it is sometimes said that many of the cathedrals of Europe are best thought of not so much as great churches that happen to contain shrines of saints, as shrines of saints over which great churches have been built.

The departed saints, of course, are in heaven with God. Yet the physical presence of their mortal remains serves as a tangible sign of our continuing spiritual fellowship with them. St. Augustine of Hippo wrote in The City of God that when we pray in the presence of a saint’s relics on earth, that same saint prays for us before God’s throne in heaven. Even if in some cases their authenticity is questionable, they nonetheless remind us that Christianity is not a religion of timeless myths and archetypes, but rather the history of God’s dealings with real live flesh-and-blood human beings, who’ve left us their mortal remains to prove it. The veneration of relics testifies above all to the Incarnational principle at the heart of the Catholic faith.

So, with great joy we celebrate our summer patronal festival of the finding of the relics of Saint Stephen in the year 415 by the priest Lucian in the small town Caphar-Gamala outside Jerusalem. Our joy is multiplied by the presence of a relic of Saint Stephen in this church. After today’s liturgy, those who wish to do so will have the opportunity to venerate the relic in the Lady Chapel following the closing organ voluntary.

As Christians we have a definite orientation to time. We look back to the past and forward to the future. Our relic of St. Stephen links us back in time to the earthly life of the first martyr, our patron saint, for whom our church is named. And it speaks the promise that just as Stephen now prays for us in heaven, so also in the future we shall be dwell together in heaven with him, with each other, and with all the saints of God.

Proper 13, Year C -- Homily at the 8 o'clock Mass

Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23
Psalm 49:1-11
Colossians 3:1-11
Luke 12:13-21

Saint Paul begins today’s epistle reading from his Letter to the Colossians with a curious statement. Urging his readers to leave behind the old unregenerate ways that characterized their lives before baptism, he exhorts them: “Put to death what is earthly in you: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.”

For years, that last phrase always puzzled me. Of all the other vices that he mentions, why does Paul single out covetousness in particular as “idolatry?”

The answer lies, I think, in the respective meanings of the words themselves. “Covetousness” means inordinate desire for wealth and possessions. And “idolatry” means putting something less than God in the place of God as the object of our faith and worship.

It follows, then, that covetousness is idolatry precisely to the extent that we seek in earthly wealth and possessions the fulfillment, happiness, and security that only God can give. Covetousness becomes idolatry when we begin to put wealth and possessions in the place of God as the ultimate object of our trust and hope.

This theme of covetousness as idolatry recurs through all of today’s readings. And this sermon this morning is one of the few in which I’ve ever been able to connect an obvious common theme connecting all three lectionary readings – the Old Testament, Epistle, and Gospel, as well as the Psalm.

To take the Old Testament reading from Ecclesiastes next, there the Preacher repeats his pessimistic refrain: Vanity, vanity, all is vanity! The essence of the Preacher’s complaint is that he spends all his life toiling to accumulate possessions, but then must die. So, he doesn’t get to enjoy the fruits of his labors, and this seems unfair. Even worse, someone who didn’t work for them gets to enjoy them all—and who knows whether that person will be wise and use the inheritance well, or a fool who will squander and waste it all?

The message of Ecclesiastes is not that hard work and commitment are futile and hence to be avoided, but rather that they are best undertaken for their own intrinsic value in the present rather than for some hypothetical reward in the future. Better in this life to work at tasks that we enjoy, or even better at tasks to which God has called us, than to spend a lifetime working at a job we hate in the hope of a retirement that may never come.

Psalm 49 echoes the theme by reminding us that no amount of earthly wealth can save us from death. Death is the great equalizer. All alike die: wise and foolish, high and low, rich and poor. And once we’re dead it doesn’t matter how much we owned in this life. We can’t take any of it with us.

The farmer in today’s Gospel reading is not a bad man. There’s no suggestion that he’s become rich by theft, graft, corruption, manipulation of the market, or oppression of his workers. Rather, through sun, soil, and rain, God has blessed him with abundant harvests and hence great wealth.

But he’s a fool. And, in significant ways, we’re all like him. Deep down, one of our greatest fears is the fear of death. One way we attempt to deal with that fear is by the acquisition of earthly possessions, whether in the form of material wealth, fame, or power. In other words, as Saint Paul says, we commit the sin of idolatry by looking to our earthly possessions to give us the sense of safety and security that can really only come from God.

And so, when the abundant harvests come in, the farmer in the parable thinks he’s got it made. He says to himself, “You have ample goods laid up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry.” But it’s a completely false sense of security, for his life is required of him that very night.

The rich fool’s mistake is his failure to recognize that both his wealth and his life are gifts of God. Once we recognize that everything we have comes from God—indeed, that life itself is God’s gift to us—then we begin to learn to trust God to provide for us all that we need, both for this life and the next.

Once we have that trust, we no longer need to hoard possessions in the futile attempt to derive from them the security that only God can give us. Instead, we begin to find the freedom to be generous, to share, and to give, just as God has been infinitely generous with us.

Sermon for Proper 12, Year C

Andrei Rublev, Trinity, early 15th century

Genesis 18:20-32

Our modern western world view is incorrigibly individualistic. We tend to take it for granted that we’re rewarded individually for our personal achievements; and that we’re punished individually for whatever faults or crimes we commit. And it’s not supposed to go any further than that. With very few exceptions, for example, our legal system doesn’t punish whole families for the transgressions of one wayward family member.

The pre-modern view was different. Notions of collective guilt and collective punishment abounded. For example, if the political leaders of an ancient city committed some crime against neighboring cities, the whole city was considered liable. In wars in the Ancient Near Eastern and Classical worlds it was not unusual for the whole population of a city to be punished for the crimes of its leaders – with the men of military age put to the sword and the women and children sold into slavery.

This morning’s reading from Genesis presupposes something like this view of collective guilt with respect to the  cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. In the narrative leading up to today’s reading, the patriarch Abraham entertains three mysterious strangers who turn out to be angels of the Lord – and in Christian tradition manifestations of the Holy Trinity as depicted in the famous Russian icon by Andrei Rublev.

After receiving Abraham’s hospitality, two of the three visitors make for the cities on the plain, Sodom and Gomorrah. Yet one of the three remains with Abraham and explains the Lord’s intentions. The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is very great; and their sin is very grave; so the messengers are going down to see whether the reports are true. Contrary to popular belief, the exact nature of the sin is never specified.

Realizing that the Lord intends to destroy the cities, Abraham assumes the posture of an intercessor. Will you indeed destroy the righteous with the wicked? If you find as few as fifty righteous people in the city, will you not spare it? In the dialogue that follows, most commentators point out the humor in Abraham’s technique of haggling with the Lord – as if in a Middle-Eastern bazaar – to get him down to ten righteous persons as the number that will suffice to spare the city.

But two points in particular are worth noting about Abraham’s negotiation. First, Abraham perseveres in interceding for the city. In this sense, he exemplifies the sort of perseverance in prayer that our Lord commends in today’s Gospel.

Secondly, Abraham does not challenge the idea that the city’s fate should be determined collectively. He doesn’t say, “Why don’t you separate out the innocent from the guilty and punish only the guilty?” That would be more of a modern western individualist thought than Abraham is capable of thinking. But he does advocate an alternative approach. Rather than destroying the whole city because of its wicked majority, why not show mercy to the whole city because of its righteous minority? Instead of punishing the innocent on account of the guilty, why not spare the guilty on account of the innocent?

Significantly, the Lord agrees. As it happens, the messengers do not find even ten righteous persons; and the next day the Lord rains down fire and brimstone from heaven to blot out Sodom and Gomorrah from the face of the earth. But it’s not for want of Abraham’s trying to save them.

The theological principle illustrated by this story, albeit in a negative way, is that of the faithful remnant. In the subsequent history of Israel, God again and again spares his people and saves them from destruction not on account of the obedience and righteousness of the whole people, but rather on account of the faithfulness of the few who remain obedient to God’s teachings even when the majority go astray.

And the Catholic tradition discerns the same principle operating in the life of the Church. A basic principle of Catholic theology is that the Church is a spiritual organism, a collective personality. Contrary to what our Evangelical brethren like to say, then, our relationship with God takes place not individually, as a series of discrete relationships with Jesus as our personal Lord and Savior, but rather corporately, in and through the Body of Christ.

There is a sense, then, that when one of us sins, the rest of us are implicated by association in the guilt of that sin; and, conversely, that when one of us does what is right and just and holy, the rest of us are implicated by association in that goodness and holiness. This is part of what it means to say that we are members of the Body of Christ, and in Christ members of one another. As Saint Paul says in his First Letter to the Corinthians, “If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.”

In the life of a parish community such as ours, not all of us fulfill our duties as well as perhaps we ought. But there is always a faithful remnant. Not everyone can come and help out at the Epiphany Soup Kitchen. Not everyone can come to the daily Mass. But the few who do are doing so on behalf of the rest of us. In a vicarious sense, they stand in for and represent the rest of the community.

This principle of parish life has two implications. First, we need to value the faithful remnant and be grateful for what they do on behalf of the rest of us. And second, we need to consider whether God is calling us to take on some part of the role of the faithful remnant by exercising a special ministry of worship, prayer, or service on behalf of our fellow parishioners. The point is that when we participate in the life of the Church in these ways, it’s not just about us and what we get out of it, for we’re acting on behalf of others and fulfilling the ministry of the parish as a whole. As Saint Paul says in his Letter to the Galatians, “Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.”

In this respect, then, today’s reading from Genesis reflects a biblical and pre-modern world view that challenges our modern western individualism. As Christians, we are not individuals subsisting in splendid isolation but members of a spiritual organism, the Body of Christ. All that we do for good or ill affects all other members of the Body. And God calls each of us to make our own unique contribution to the Body’s health, growth, and well-being, both now and for eternity.

Proper 6, Year C -- Sunday Sermon

Anonymous, David and Bathsheba, High Rhine, Mid-17th Century

II Samuel 11:26-12:10, 13-15
Luke 7:36-50

For many people today, a favorite saying of our Lord is found in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew, 7:1-2, where Jesus warns his listeners, and us: “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged …”

It’s a recurrent theme in folktales: the king, judge, or official who decrees a punishment for someone else only to find himself condemned by his own decree when by some twist of fate the positions are reversed. In the Book of Esther, for example, the evil royal counselor Haman ends up being hanged on the very same gibbet he’s had constructed for the hanging of Mordecai the Jew.

“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged.” Our readings for this morning vividly illustrate this dictum in different ways. In the Old Testament reading, from the second Book of Samuel, King David has committed a particularly heinous crime by arranging the death of Uriah the Hittite in battle so that he can take his wife Bathsheba, for whom he’s lusted.

Sent by God to confront the king, the Prophet Nathan tells David the story of a rich man with many flocks and herds, and a poor man whose only possession is one little lamb. But when called upon to provide hospitality to a stranger, the rich man, instead of taking a lamb from his own flocks, takes the poor man’s lamb. Thinking that the story is true and that Nathan is asking him to render judgment as king, David becomes exceedingly angry: “The man who has done this deserves to die; and he shall restore the lamb fourfold.”

At this point, Nathan springs the trap that he’s set: “You are the man … You have smitten Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife, and have slain him with the sword of the Ammonites.” Truly, the judgment that David has pronounced is the judgment with which he is himself judged.

We encounter a similar boomeranging of judgment in today’s Gospel. The host of the dinner party, Simon the Pharisee, presumes to judge both a woman of the city and Jesus himself—the woman for being a sinner, and Jesus for apparently not recognizing this: “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.”

Yet Jesus demonstrates that he’s indeed a prophet, for he knows exactly what Simon is thinking. So he tells the story of two debtors forgiven by the same creditor: one for a small amount and the other for a large amount. Which one, he asks, will love him more? When Simon answers correctly, “The one to whom he forgave more,” then just as Nathan did with David, Jesus proceeds to spring his trap. He proceeds to hold the woman up as a model of the hospitality that Simon has failed to show him. So, having taken it upon himself to judge both Jesus and the woman, Simon finds himself the one judged and found wanting – and precisely in comparison with the woman he’s presumed to judge.

“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged …” This saying is often misinterpreted to mean that we should refrain from all judgment. But that conclusion would be simplistic. Every day, we cannot avoid making numerous evaluations of other people’s statements, actions, motivations, and intentions. Can I trust this person? Does she really mean what she says? How do I assess what he’s just done so that I can respond appropriately and fairly?

In today’s readings, it is not only King David and Simon the Pharisee who exercise judgment, but also Nathan the Prophet, and our Lord himself. Moreover, both David and Simon the Pharisee give good judgments in response to the stories told them by Nathan and Jesus respectively. Jesus even says to Simon, “You have judged rightly.” The choice, then, is not between judgment and non-judgment, but rather between good judgment and bad judgment, between right judgment and wrong judgment.

In the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus says “Judge not, that you be not judged,” he is really warning us against the hypocrisy of judging others when our own sins are as bad if not worse than theirs. Hence he follows this saying with the admonition that before we attend to the speck in our neighbor’s eye, we need to attend to the log in our eye.

The message is not that we should avoid judging others, as if that were possible, but rather that whenever we exercise even legitimate judgment we generally stand condemned by the very same standards. Whenever we call others to account—as indeed from time to time we must—we need to remember that we speak only as the greatest of sinners ourselves. We may not have committed exactly the same sins, but the ones we’ve committed are bad enough. We’ve no grounds for any posture of self-righteousness or moral superiority.

And that realization enables us not only to judge but also to forgive. In today’s readings, the final word is not judgment but forgiveness. When David confesses his sin to the Lord, the prophet Nathan proclaims: “The Lord has put away your sin; you shall not die.” And Jesus says to the woman of the city: “Your sins are forgiven … go in peace.”

Judgment, then, is an inescapable component of all human relations. We cannot interact with other people in any setting without constantly evaluating and judging them. But we gain the ability to judge rightly through the humility of recognizing our own sins and shortcomings first. When we know ourselves to be forgiven sinners, our judgment becomes more gentle, forbearing, and compassionate. And together with the knowledge by which we judge rightly, comes the capacity to forgive, as God in Christ has forgiven us.

Sermon for Corpus Christi [at the 10 am Mass]

It’s a temptation to take for granted the great privilege of receiving Holy Communion each week. Here at S. Stephen’s, we celebrate the Mass twice every Sunday, and most people come to the altar rail and receive Communion as a matter of course.

It was not ever thus. In most Episcopal parishes a hundred years ago, the principal service on Sunday was generally sung Morning Prayer, or choral Matins, with sermon. Those who wanted to receive Communion more than three or four times a year went to the early service at 8 am.

Even in Anglo-Catholic parishes such as ours, the Solemn High Mass at 11 am would generally be a “non-communicating” Mass: that is, only the priest would receive. Again, those who wanted Communion would go to the early service.

When my wife was growing up in an Anglo-Catholic parish in the Church of England, her family would go at 8 am to make their Communions at the early service. Then, they would go home for breakfast, after which they would return to church to sing in the choir at the non‑communicating Solemn High Mass at 11.

But of course many more people came to the Solemn High Mass than had been at the early service. In other words, even in Anglo-Catholic parishes, the majority of people might faithfully attend the principal service every Sunday and still receive Communion only, say, once a month or even just once a quarter. The canonical minimum to be considered a communicant of the Church is still only three times a year: typically at Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost.

This pattern began to change in the 1930s, under the influence of what was known as the Parish Communion Movement. The aim of this movement was to promote the full participation of the people in the Church’s worship. And since receiving Holy Communion is the fullest expression of this participation, the Parish Communion Movement sought above all to make the principal Sunday service a Eucharist at which all the people would have the opportunity to do just that.

In England, one of the principal spokesmen of the parish Communion movement, A.G. Hebert, wrote in 1937 that the ideal time was around 9 or 9:30 in the morning. The 8 am service was too early for many people; and 11 am was too late for most people to keep the fast before Communion. In 1949, by the way, Hebert visited this country and preached from this pulpit. Perhaps it was more than a coincidence that just a year later, in 1950, my predecessor Fr. Ward did away with the non-communicating High Mass here at S. Stephen’s.

Three decades after that, the 1979 Prayer Book fulfilled one of the key goals of the Parish Communion Movement by specifying the Holy Eucharist as “the principal act of worship on the Lord’s Day and other major Feasts,” and also by directing that at every Mass the Sacrament must be made available to the people.

So, we’ve come a long way. The question today, however, is whether we’ve come too far, and become too casual in our approach to the Blessed Sacrament. Here, perhaps, the Feast of Corpus Christi can help us.

Historically, in the Church we’ve tended to see-saw between periods when Christians felt free to receive Communion weekly or even daily, as in very first centuries of the early Church, and periods when people were so afraid of receiving unworthily that they tended to refrain from receiving at all. In 1215, for example, the Fourth Lateran Council had to require lay people to receive at least once a year, at Easter, after making their Confession to a priest.

The Feast of Corpus Christi originated in the thirteenth century as part of a movement of popular devotion to the Blessed Sacrament that had as one of its aims a return to more frequent Communion. The message of this feast is twofold. On one hand, we should by all means avail ourselves of the opportunity for weekly or even daily Communion. But on the other hand, we must approach the Sacrament with the utmost care, preparation, reverence, and devotion.

In other words, we need to steer a middle course between a rigorism that would keep us from Communion, and a laxity that would lead us to receive carelessly and thoughtlessly. Alas, the greater danger before the Church today is not rigorism but laxity.

Providentially, the Catholic spiritual tradition offers us practices that can help us increase the reverence and devotion with which we approach Holy Communion. Most important of all is spiritual preparation for Mass: saying our prayers and examining our consciences. For what sins and shortcomings are we seeking God’s forgiveness and help in this Mass? For what people and situations are we offering up our participation in this Mass?

At the very least, we need to make an effort to get to church on time so that we have an opportunity to get recollected in the few minutes before Mass begins. And if we arrive late, the Church’s traditional guideline is that we should only receive Communion if we’ve been present for the reading of the Gospel.

One key discipline of preparation is the traditional Fast before Communion. For some people health concerns make this impossible, and we certainly don’t want people passing out in the pews. But even if we can’t go completely without food from midnight the night before, it’s still a commendable practice to observe the minimal rule of eating nothing for at least an hour before Mass. It’s really difficult to be spiritually awake and alert for Holy Communion on a full stomach!

Also, the Church’s traditional wisdom is that we should not receive Holy Communion more than once a day, just as ideally priests should not celebrate Mass more than once a day. This is one reason among many, incidentally, why I’m really glad that Fr. Sawicky has arrived. If for some reason you have occasion to be at a second Mass on a day when you’ve already received Holy Communion, it’s perfectly okay and indeed highly commendable to go up for a blessing and not receive a second time. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise! This is not like a meal where it’s bad manners not to eat what’s set before you.

Finally, no less important than preparation before Communion is thanksgiving after Communion. When we return to the pew from the altar rail, or after the end of the closing hymn, we need to take a few moments to say “thank you” to God for his gift of himself to us in the Blessed Sacrament, and to recommit ourselves to whatever tasks he’s given us to do in the world.

So, on this Feast of Corpus Christi, we give thanks for all who worked so hard for so many years to re-establish the Communion of the Faithful as the norm every Sunday and Holy Day. But we also show our gratitude by receiving this great gift with all the care, reverence, preparation, and devotion that it deserves.

Sermon for Proper 4, Year C [at the 8 am Mass]

I Kings 8:22-23, 41-43
Luke 7:1-10

We hear a lot today about boundaries. The maintenance of appropriate professional and personal boundaries is a hot topic. And both our Old Testament and Gospel readings today touch on what might be called religious boundaries.

In the first reading, King Solomon is praying at the dedication of the newly constructed Temple in Jerusalem. He calls on God to listen to and answer the prayer of even the foreigner who comes to Jerusalem to pray towards this house.

At this stage of Israel’s history, a foreigner is by definition a Gentile. Such a foreigner is forbidden to enter the Temple on pain of death. So here we encounter a firm religious and national boundary. Entry into God’s house is restricted to members of God’s people Israel; everyone else must stay outside.

Yet Solomon acknowledges in his prayer that God himself is not bound by such boundaries. When the foreigner prays towards this house, Solomon implores, “hear thou in heaven thy dwelling place, and do according to all for which the foreigner calls unto thee; in order that all the peoples of the earth may know thy name and fear thee …”

In other words, the boundary restricting a foreigner from access to God’s house may be appropriate and necessary in that time and place; but it doesn’t restrict the foreigner’s access to God himself. God is perfectly well able to hear their prayers as well and reach out beyond the boundary to do all that the foreigner asks.

In the Gospel reading, however, we encounter almost exactly the reverse situation. A Roman centurion in the town of Capernaum has a servant who is ill and at the point of death. The centurion is a foreigner in the land of Israel. And as an observant Jew, Jesus is forbidden by the purity regulations of his religion from entering the house of a Gentile. If he does so, he will become ritually unclean, and will have to undergo a process of ritual purification before being allowed to participate again in the life and worship of the Jewish people.

So, where in the first reading we have a foreigner forbidden from entering God’s house, in the second reading we have God Incarnate forbidden from entering a foreigner’s house. The religious boundaries work in both directions!

Centurions were middle-ranking officers in the Roman army, which was divided into units called legions, cohorts, and centuries. Typically, in the first century, a legion consisted of about 4,800 soldiers, and was divided into ten cohorts each comprising 480 men. A cohort was divided in turn into six centuries, each consisting of 80 men and commanded by a centurion, assisted by junior officers.

So in or near Capernaum, the fishing village on the Sea of Galilee that was home to Saint Peter, there was stationed a century of soldiers commanded by this unnamed centurion. Unlike many Roman officers, however, he loved the Jewish nation, and had even built Capernaum’s synagogue. Incidentally, the basalt foundations and floor of the first-century synagogue at Capernaum can still be seen today, beneath the ruins of the fourth-century synagogue that replaced it.

It’s possible that our centurion may have been what was known in the Roman world as a “God-fearer,” that is, a Gentile who admired the Jewish religion, prayed to its God, and tried to follow its ethical teachings, without going the whole way converting, being circumcised, and becoming a Torah-observant Jew.

Be that as it may, a key responsibility of the centurion’s job was to pay close attention to everything that was going on in his immediate vicinity – so that he would be in a position to respond to the first signs of trouble. He would thus have been fully informed about Jesus. Prophets and teachers with a popular following were precisely the sorts of people the Roman authorities wanted to keep a close eye on. So, no doubt, the centurion would have heard about our Lord’s powers as a healer and miracle-worker as well.

No wonder, then, when his beloved servant is at the point of death, that he sends the local elders of the synagogue to seek Jesus’ assistance. In response to his plea, and with the elders’ good recommendation of this centurion, Jesus agrees and comes with them. But when he hears that our Lord is on the way, rather than let him complete the journey and cross the threshold of his house, the centurion sends friends with the message: “Lord … I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. But say the word, and let my servant be healed.”

In other words, in a display of enormous cultural sensitivity and consideration, the centurion is respecting the religious boundaries that Jesus must observe. His statement, “I am not worthy,” refers not to his moral character but rather to his ritually unclean status as a Gentile. He knows that if Jesus enters his house, it will cause him the great inconvenience of having to undergo ritual purification, and could very well cause others to accuse him of being a Roman collaborator.

But the centurion also knows that while as a human being Jesus is restricted by these religious boundaries, as the agent of God’s power he is not. So the centurion affirms his belief that Jesus can heal his servant simply by speaking a word from a distance – just as he himself obeys orders issued from a distance by his superiors, and just as he commands his subordinates to travel great distances to carry out his orders.

In short, while both the centurion and Jesus himself are restricted by the religious boundaries separating Jews and Gentiles, nonetheless, both the centurion’s faith, and our Lord’s power and authority, are able to cross over and transcend all such boundaries. Jesus marvels that not even in Israel has he encountered such faith. And, even from a distance, the centurion’s servant is healed.

Now the great temptation for the preacher at this point would be to conclude that, well, that was then and this is now, and of course we don’t observe such silly religious boundaries anymore. But that conclusion would be profoundly mistaken. The boundaries have changed, to be sure, but they’re still there.

For example, according to the canon law of the Episcopal Church, only those who’ve been baptized may receive Holy Communion. Only priests may celebrate the Eucharist. Only bishops may ordain. The rubrics of the Prayer Book set multiple boundaries on what may and may not be done in our liturgical services. And these religious boundaries are valid, necessary, and appropriate for ordering our life together in the Church.

Yet the message of our readings this morning also remains valid. We’re bound by these boundaries, but God is not. God hears the prayers of all who call upon him, whether Christian or not, whether religious believer or not. And God retains absolute freedom in deciding how he may choose to respond.