EASTER VIGIL

April 3, 2021

St. Uriel’s, Sea Girt, New Jersey

So far as I’m concerned, the Easter Vigil really is the most exciting and powerful service of the entire Church year. Maybe you agree, or else you wouldn’t be here this evening.

It’s also one of the most ancient Christian liturgies we have on record. By the third century it was firmly established as the Church’s annual occasion of administering Holy Baptism. While practices varied from place to place, the typical pattern was for adult converts to undertake a period of preparation for baptism lasting as long as three years or more. During this period, they were called catechumens. The final forty days before Easter – which gradually evolved into the season of Lent – comprised intensive instruction in the essentials of the faith, as well as fasting and prayer undertaken by the whole Church together with and on behalf of the catechumens.

Finally, between sunset and sunrise on Easter Eve, a long vigil service would take place, lasting many hours. (What we’re doing here this evening is a highly abbreviated version of that!) Down through the centuries, various ceremonies evolved to punctuate the stages of this liturgy: kindling new fire; lighting the Paschal Candle; chanting the Exultet; reciting the Litany of the Saints; proclaiming the Easter Alleluia. 

From the earliest days, however, the heart of this liturgy has comprised three basic components: first, a lengthy service of readings from the Old Testament, each pointing by way of anticipation to Christ’s death and Resurrection; second, the administration of Holy Baptism; and third, the celebration of the Eucharist, at which the newly-baptized would receive Holy Communion for the first time.

From the beginning, then, the Church’s celebration of Christ’s Resurrection at the Great Vigil was paired with the administration of Holy Baptism – although eventually Baptism ceased to be confined to Easter and came to be administered at other times during the year. The point I want to emphasize is that this pairing of Holy Baptism with the Easter celebration was neither accidental nor arbitrary, but deliberate and intentional. To see why, we need look no further than our Epistle for this evening, from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans, Chapter 6, verses 3 through 11.

Here, the Apostle describes Baptism as a kind of virtual participation in Christ’s death, burial, and Resurrection. “Do you not know,” Paul writes, “that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”

 

It’s a remarkable passage. Here baptism appears as a symbol not only of washing and cleansing, but also of drowning. Paul is saying that this enacted sign of death-by-water becomes for Christians the means of participation in Christ’s own death and burial. In other words, Christ saves us not merely as external beneficiaries of but rather as active participants in his crucifixion and entombment. And the vehicle by which we share in his death and burial is none other than the Sacrament of Holy Baptism.

It’s not as though Christ pays the price of our sins on the cross for us as a kind of divine bookkeeping transaction. The supernatural reality at play here is more organic than forensic. We participate in Christ’s death through baptism, so that, as Paul writes, “we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For he who has died is freed from sin.” In the background here is the ancient understanding that a slave is a slave only for life; in death the slave gains freedom from the former master. Similarly, by our participation in Christ’s death through Holy Baptism, we gain liberation from slavery to sin’s former mastery over our lives.

That’s the first part of Paul’s argument. The second part is that through Baptism we participate also in Christ's Resurrection from the dead. This sharing in Christ’s risen life is both a future and a present reality. On one hand, Paul writes, “If we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” That’s the future aspect: the hope of sharing in the glory of resurrection on the last day. But at the same time, Paul writes, “The death he died, he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” In other words, through Baptism we enjoy an anticipatory foretaste, here and now, of the life of the world to come, making possible new lives in this world marked by love, joy, hope, self-giving, and service. As Paul puts it, we were buried with Christ by baptism into death, so that “we too might walk in newness of life.” 

Holy Baptism is, then, the link between the first Easter Day two millennia ago, and our life together in the Church today. The Easter Vigil commemorates not only Christ’s victory over death, but also our death to sin and our resurrection to new and eternal life in him. On this most holy night, then, we have fittingly renewed our baptismal commitment, as we celebrate the power of Christ’s resurrection in our lives today.

GOOD FRIDAY

April 2, 2021

St. Uriel’s, Sea Girt, New Jersey

The archetypal symbol of Christian faith is the cross. Apart from its historical role as the instrument of the Lord’s execution and death, some commentators see its intersection of vertical and horizontal beams as a visual symbol of incarnation. The vertical beam symbolizes transcendence. It points to heaven above, and to eternity. The horizontal beam symbolizes immanence. It points to the world around us, the here and the now. So the cross’s intersection of vertical and horizontal signifies by itself the union of transcendence and immanence, eternity and time, spirit and matter, divine and human, in Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God. 

At the historical level, Jesus’ death on an actual wooden cross on the hill of Golgotha also exhibits both a vertical and a horizontal dimension. Along the vertical axis, the Lord is offering up to his Father in heaven the one, full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world; and the Father is looking down from heaven and lovingly accepting his Son’s sacrifice. Along the horizontal axis, the dying Lord is stretching out his arms of love to gather in all for whose salvation he’s offering himself; and conversely his life, forgiveness, grace, and strength are flowing out from his stretched-out arms to the world’s remotest ends.

This ancient Good Friday liturgy exhibits a fourfold structure, which oscillates between these vertical and horizontal dimensions. Alternately, our attention is drawn upwards, vertically, to Jesus lifted high on the cross. Then, our attention is redirected outwards, horizontally, to the world he died to save. And so the pattern repeats itself.

We begin with the Liturgy of the Word, culminating in the Passion according to Saint John. Its purpose is to focus our attention vertically on Jesus and what he actually did on Good Friday. In some churches, the Passion is read dramatically, with readers taking the various spoken parts. Done well—and from what I’ve seen so far, it’s done very well here at St. Uriel's—that kind of reading can be effective and moving. In parishes that have the resources to do so, the Passion is sung to the ancient chants, with the cantors and choir taking the various parts. Either way, the goal is a performative recitation, aiming not merely to remember something that happened in the past, but to make it vivid and real, to transport us back, so that we become virtual eyewitnesses; or, conversely, to bring it forward into the present so that we experience it in the here and now in all its naked terror and awe.

Then, following a sermon or homily, which is ideally kept brief, we turn outward from the cross horizontally towards the world, reciting the series of ancient prayers known as the Solemn Collects. This movement has a deep inner logic. It’s not simply that since we really have nothing to say, we may as well just say some prayers. No, having just listened to the Passion Gospel, we ask God to apply the benefits of his Son’s death “to all people everywhere, according to their needs.” We make these prayers in the assurance that “God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.” The Church’s liturgical response to the proclamation of the Lord’s death is thus to pray for all those for whom he died.

Continuing our alternation between the vertical and the horizontal dimensions, we turn our attention once again vertically to the cross, this time in love and adoration. A crucifix is brought in for the congregation’s veneration. The rubrics specify that this cross must be made of wood, like the cross on which Jesus was crucified. This ceremony dates back (at least) to the fourth-century Church in Jerusalem, where worshippers at the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher would line up for hours on Good Friday to kiss a large fragment of the true Cross that would be unveiled and exposed for that purpose. In the current pandemic, we must temporarily forego the practice of each person having the opportunity to venerate individually, but still, we can all do so collectively, from a distance.

Following the Liturgy of the Word, the Solemn Collects, and the Veneration of the Cross, comes the fourth part of the liturgy, the Mass of the Presanctified. We retrieve from the Altar of Repose the Blessed Sacrament reserved at last night’s Mass of the Lord’s Supper. In many churches, the Sacrament is reserved one kind only, the sacred hosts but not the wine, to emphasize that today’s liturgy is not another Mass, not a fresh offering of the Holy Eucharist, but Communion from the Reserved Sacrament—an extension of the single extended Triduum liturgy that began last night.

The Church’s sacramental theology teaches us that we receive the grace of Holy Communion just as fully in one kind as in both kinds. But still, Communion in one kind does diminish the symbolism. The English Dominican theologian Aidan Nichols writes: “We are invited to come to Communion under the deliberately deficient symbolism of the single species. As orthodox Catholics we know that our Lord is wholly present in his full Godhead and his full manhood under either Eucharistic sign. Yet we also respect the ways in which he allows himself to be given to us ... Today we receive him, quite deliberately, by the symbolism of incompletion … Today we have only a truncated Eucharist … for today Christ our Lord suffered the disintegration of his very being.” 

In the pandemic, of course, we’ve been receiving Communion in one kind now for many months. I long for the day when we restore the chalice to the congregation so that we can all receive in both kinds. In the meantime, our Masses share in this aspect of the diminished symbolism of the Good Friday liturgy—perhaps a fitting liturgical expression of our life together under pandemic conditions.

Still, the Holy Communion of Good Friday conveys the Lord’s life, grace, and power to all who receive it. Having venerated Christ on the cross, we receive him into ourselves—not just for comfort and consolation, but also for empowerment as agents of the cross: ambassadors of Christ’s forgiveness, reconciliation, and healing. So here we have another turn to the horizontal. Just as in the Solemn Collects we prayed for the world that Christ died to save, so now in the Communion of the Presanctified we offer ourselves as living vessels to carry forth Christ’s salvation into that same world. 

Following Communion, we leave in silence. There’s nothing left to say. For the time being, the Incarnate Word has been silenced. We do well to keep silence too, waiting in hope and expectation for what God is going to do next.

MAUNDY THURSDAY

April 1, 2021

St. Uriel's, Sea Girt, N.J.

The Liturgy of Maundy Thursday commemorates our Lord’s institution of the Eucharist, and his washing of his disciples’ feet, at his Last Supper with them on the eve of his death. This year, however, we’re unable to enact the foot-washing that is a familiar staple of this liturgy in so many parishes: a particular deprivation for your clergy, for whom the ritual affords a welcome annual reminder of our vocation as first and foremost one of service: to be “servants of the servants of God.”

It also seems a bit odd to be commemorating Our Lord’s commandment to celebrate the Eucharist “in remembrance of him” at the end of a year in which for a time all public gatherings, including for worship, were prohibited (in my opinion, quite appropriately). So, I’d like to take this opportunity to reflect on something of what I think we may have learned about the nature of our Eucharistic life as the Body of Christ in a time of pandemic.

In a theological sense, this pandemic has served as one of those sudden and unexpected calamities that lay bare the quality of our spiritual foundations—as in Our Lord’s parable in Matthew 7 of two houses, one built on sand and one built on rock. When the rain fell, and the floods came, and the wind blew, the house built on rock remained standing firm, but the house built on sand fell “and great was the fall of it.”

The parishes and congregations found best prepared for this pandemic were those that had already been building on solid foundations. In a few cases, this was true simply at a technological level. I know at least one parish that several years ago had installed a sophisticated system of wall-mounted cameras for recording and live-streaming liturgies. They had no idea that a pandemic was coming; they were simply responding to the pastoral needs of an aging and geographically-dispersed congregation whose members could not always be physically present for worship. So when the pandemic came, they were already all set to begin broadcasting Mass for a remote congregation. The good news in this respect has been that not only here at St. Uriel’s, but across the Episcopal Church, such remote participation in worship has remained relatively high. And that’s a foundation on which we need to continue building.

At a spiritual level, the most impressive responses to the crisis have similarly come from those parishes and communities that already had a doctrinally sound theology of worship. Here at Saint Uriel’s, our Anglo-Catholic tradition stood us in particularly good stead. For example, parishioners who’d already been taught that Christ is fully and equally present in both the consecrated Bread and Wine found the transition to Communion in one kind less distressing than those who had not. I long for our return to Communion in both kinds, both the Host and the Chalice, so that we may "do this, as often as [we] drink it, in remembrance of [Him]". But in the meantime, we may rest assured that we receive the fullness of sacramental grace in receiving the Host alone (or, indeed, the Chalice alone).

Once live-streaming became the only option in many places for continued access to worship in locked-down churches, it’s understandable that some dioceses and parishes switched to Morning Prayer as a way of leveling the spiritual playing field. If everybody couldn’t be together to receive Holy Communion, then the clergy also would also abstain or “fast” from the Eucharist in solidarity with their parishioners. That choice was consistent with certain traditions of Anglican understanding and practice.

I rejoice, however, that other parishes of a more Catholic bent, such as Saint Uriel’s, decided without hesitation to keep on offering Mass for the spiritual benefit of even physically absent congregations whose members could participate remotely from home, often via hastily-improvised live-streaming technology. The holy sacrifice of the Mass is the most powerful intercession we can offer for the needs of the Church and the world. The venerable Catholic practice of making a spiritual Communion became an invaluable rock to cling to while we weathered the storm.

Since we’ve reopened for limited in-person worship, it’s wonderful that so many St. Uriel’s parishioners have felt safe enough to return to church. But the important thing is to do the best we can and offer that to God. If some people aren’t ready yet to return and prefer to follow our services online, making a spiritual Communion at the appropriate moment, then that’s an acceptable offering as well. God knows that we’re all trying to do the best we can under difficult circumstances.

Perhaps counterintuitively, I believe that our present trials are strengthening us for the future in ways that we can only dimly perceive at present. Specifically, I want to share three principal hopes for whatever “return to normal” lies ahead.

First, contrary to those who fear that prolonged physical absence will irrevocably damage Mass attendance, we may dare to hope that one result will be a renewed appreciation of the value of gathering in churches for worship, along with a greater commitment to regular participation in the liturgy. When something has been taken away from us for a time, we’re less apt to take it for granted and more likely instead recognize it for the incomparable privilege that it is.

Second, many Church members, lay and ordained, have found themselves moved to greater reliance on different forms of personal prayer—particularly the Daily Office and Marian devotions such as the Holy Rosary. We may hope that this deepening of personal spiritual discipline will strengthen us for our future life and mission.

Third, when we’re finally able to return to unrestricted participation in worship in our beloved sacred spaces, we may discover that we’ve learned something crucial: namely, that even when physically present in church we’re still worshiping at one remove. Generations of liturgical theologians and mystics—going back to Saint John the Divine on the island of Patmos—have reminded us that the true liturgy, the ultimately real liturgy, is that offered in heaven before the Lamb’s eternal throne. Our temporal gatherings in earthly cathedrals, churches, and chapels represent really another form of remote participation—a symbolic live-streaming in time and space of the endless offering of God the Son to God the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit, into which Our Lady and all the angels and saints in heaven are continually drawn in perfect praise and adoration.

So, this evening we give thanks for Our Lord’s institution of the Holy Eucharist as the sacramental means by which we “proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” Our eventual restoration to full participation in the Church’s liturgical and sacramental life will be a joyous homecoming—and may God hasten its day! But we remember that, like a TV screen connected to the internet, even so-called “in-person” earthly worship puts us in contact with an infinitely greater reality that continues to beckon us in its promise of the ultimate fulfillment of all our deepest desires and longings in the life of the world to come.

PALM SUNDAY

March 28, 2021

St. Uriel’s, Sea Girt, N.J.

Well, we’ve simplified things a bit this year, omitting the palm-bearing procession from the parish hall into the church. I earnestly hope that next year we’ll be able to restore these rites in their fullness. It nonetheless remains the case that today’s proceedings consist of not one liturgy but two: the Liturgy of the Palms and the Liturgy of the Lord’s Passion.

Down through the years, I’m sure we’ve all heard any number of sermons—I’ve given a good many myself—emphasizing the contrast between today’s two liturgies: the joyful acclamations of “Hosanna to the Son of David” giving way to the hateful cries of “Crucify him!”; the triumphal entry of the king into his capital city giving way to the condemned prisoner carrying his cross outside the walls of that same city to die.

On this Palm Sunday, however, I want to dwell a bit on the underlying unity between these two liturgies. For Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem and his carrying the Cross to Golgotha both constitute parts of the same larger movement. Both fit into the same broader trajectory.

We really don’t know what Jesus was thinking as he rode the donkey into Jerusalem. We need to beware of overly psychologizing interpretations of the stories in the Gospels and the historical books of the Bible because, for the most part, the biblical writers tell us what the main characters said and did, not what they were thinking or what was going on inside their heads.

Still, it’s safe to surmise that Jesus approached Jerusalem that first Palm Sunday knowing that despite the outward trappings of a royal procession, he was in fact entering the city where he’d be betrayed, arrested, condemned, tortured, and put to death. He’d already told his disciples as much several times, beginning in the eighth chapter of Saint Mark’s Gospel: “And he began to teach them that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly.”

So, the Lord’s entry into Jerusalem was one stage in the journey that Saint Paul describes in today’s reading from his Letter to the Philippians: “Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.”

The Greek word for self-emptying is kenosis, and this passage from Philippians is sometimes called Paul’s kenosis hymn, since its rhythm and meter in the original Greek text have certain hymn-like qualities. It sings of Christ, the pre-existent Son of the Father, voluntarily emptying himself of his divine power and glory to be born as a human being; and then, as a human being, humbling himself even to the point of accepting death on a cross, one of the most painful and degrading forms of execution imaginable.

The image of Jesus entering Jerusalem on a donkey coheres well with this theme of self-humbling, in fulfillment of the words of the Old Testament prophet Zechariah: “Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on an ass, on a colt the foal of an ass.” It’s paradoxically an image of simultaneous triumph and humiliation. But that’s part and parcel of Christ’s journey of obedience unto death, even death on a cross.

The Passion Gospel that we’ve just read emphasizes Our Lord’s free and voluntary acceptance of his death. It’s to fulfill this mission that he enters Jerusalem in the first place. As Isaiah prophesies in today’s Old Testament reading: “I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I hid not my face from shame and spitting.”  When Jesus is arrested, he doesn’t try to escape. When questioned by Pilate, he doesn’t attempt to argue his defense or plead for his life; when he’s offered the anesthetic of wine mingled with myrrh, he refuses to take it.

The Collect for Palm Sunday affirms that Christ did all this so “that all mankind should follow the example of his great humility,” and then it asks God to grant “that we may both follow the example of his patience” and “be made partakers in his resurrection.”

In other words, the way of Christian discipleship is not the way of prideful self-assertion but of self-sacrifice in service to God and our neighbor. We’re called to follow the example not only of Christ’s humility but also of his patience under affliction. To return to Philippians, Paul introduces the passage I just quoted with the words: “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped ...”

“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus.” This past year has involved many sacrifices for all of us. Owing to the Covid-19 pandemic, we’ve had to give up many pleasures and privileges that we once took for granted. And for those who have fallen ill, died, or lost loved ones, it’s been a time of great suffering. The good news is that Jesus knows what we’re going through, and he offers us the example of his patience so that we may be partakers in his resurrection. When we consider what he went through for our sakes, then perhaps by his grace we can find the strength to accept whatever sacrifices he asks us to take on for his sake at this time in our history.

I said it on Ash Wednesday, and I’ll say it again today: Easter is coming! But before we arrive at the joy of the Resurrection, we need to walk the Way of the Cross, which is what we’re about today, and what we’ll be about this coming week. We need continually to remind ourselves that the Way of the Cross is the road not to oblivion but the path to eternal life and glory.

Today, we commemorate with great joy the Lord’s Triumphal Entry within the walls of Jerusalem, and with great sorrow his Death outside those same city walls. Still, both events are preludes to a greater victory than anyone present can possibly imagine. And all that I’ve been trying to say in this sermon is nowhere summed up better than in the last verse of the great Palm Sunday hymn:

Ride on, ride on in majesty,

In lowly pomp ride on to die;

Bow thy meek head to mortal pain,

Then take, O God, thy power and reign.  

 FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT

March 14, 2021

St. Uriel’s Church, Sea Girt, N.J.

Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22 

Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21

Today’s readings highlight God’s mercy. Psalm 107 exhorts God’s people to “give thanks to the Lord for his mercy, and the wonders he does for his children.” And in the reading from Galatians, Saint Paul describes God as “rich in mercy.”

A good definition of mercy might be “undeserved favor or forgiveness.” The well-known judicial ideal of “justice tempered with mercy” suggests a certain tension between justice and mercy. If we follow Aristotle in defining justice as “giving everyone their due,” then mercy is opposed to justice, because when we receive mercy, we don’t get what we deserve. The astonishing paradox, however, is that God embodies both perfect justice and infinite mercy. And today’s readings afford us glimpses into this wonderful mystery.

The episode in today’s Old Testament reading from Numbers occurs near the end of the Israelites’ forty years of wandering in the wilderness, just as they’re poised to make their final approach to the Promised land. For much of their wanderings they’ve camped near oases where food and water have been at least available if not plentiful. But now, traversing an arid desert known as the Wilderness of Sin, they begin to grumble and complain.

In the past, these incidents have fallen into something of a standard pattern. First, a threat to the people’s survival emerges, such as hunger or thirst. Second, the people find fault with Moses and accuse him of leading them out into the desert to die. Third, in desperation and fear for his life, Moses prays to the Lord. Fourth, in response to Moses’ intercession, God provides a miraculous deliverance in some such form as manna from heaven, or water from the rock. And then, fifth, the people cease complaining and the journey resumes.

This time, however, events take a slightly different turn. In response to the people’s grumbling and complaining, God sends a plague of fiery serpents, which bite the people so that many of them die. (That particular area is home to several species of venomous vipers, whose bites can be life-threatening. The description “fiery serpents” most likely refers to the burning sensation their bites cause.) 

It turns out, however, that the Israelites have actually learned something during their forty years of wandering, for now they recognize without being told that they’ve sinned. And they’ve also learned that the right course of action in this situation is to entreat Moses to pray to God on their behalf.

God answers the prayer, however, not by taking away the snakes, but by providing a remedy for the snakebite. The underlying theological point is that even though sins can always be forgiven, the consequences of sin cannot always be undone. In any case, God directs Moses to make a bronze image of a snake and set it on a pole, so that anyone who’s been bitten may look on the image and live.

Anthropologists have a field day with this story, pointing out how primitive religions often use images of dangerous animals to protect against those animals, and also how, in many cultures, snakes symbolize medicine and healing. But in the Bible the serpent has a deeper significance still. Remember that in the Book of Genesis, it was the serpent who first tempted Adam and Eve to disobey God.

In the wilderness, the Israelites are disobedient to God and suffer death by fiery serpents, just as in the beginning Adam and Eve became subject to sin and death by the serpent’s temptation. So the Israelites’ grumbling in the wilderness figuratively symbolizes human sin in all times and places, and the fiery serpents symbolize sin’s poisonous consequences.

Why, then, should healing come by means of a bronze serpent on a pole? One compelling explanation is that in order to be healed, the Israelites must face up to the reality of their sin. The bronze serpent brings them face to face with a visual symbol of their transgression, so they can look upon it, acknowledge their sin, and repent—in response to which God, in his mercy, will forgive and heal them.

This background helps explain the significance of our Lord’s words to Nicodemus in today’s Gospel reading from Saint John: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

The healing of the snake-bitten Israelites by means of the visual image of a bronze serpent on a pole foreshadows the healing of our wounded humanity by the cross of Christ. There’s no more vivid symbol of sin’s horror than the cross. When the Son of God came into the world, this is what we did to him. For this very reason, however, the cross becomes the most powerful remedy ever for sin. The image of the cross confronts us with the consequences of our rebellion, so that we may gain the opportunity to avail ourselves of God’s mercy.

To do so, we need only turn to God in repentance and faith. Notice that the indispensable prerequisite to the healing of the snake-bitten Israelites was confessing their sins and casting themselves on God’s mercy. As the psalmist sings, “Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress.” 

The key reassurance for us is that God desires only our eternal salvation, and he’s willing to go to any lengths to get us there: even becoming incarnate as a human being and dying on a cross for our sakes. As Jesus says to Nicodemus in today’s Gospel, “God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”

So, then, Christ’s sacrifice on the cross simultaneously fulfills both God’s justice and his mercy. In today’s Epistle, Saint Paul emphasizes that the gift of eternal salvation is given by God’s grace and received in faith: “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God—not because of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

In other words, we cannot do anything by ourselves to merit eternal life; we can only accept in faith the salvation that Christ has already won for us at such great cost to himself. But then, out of gratitude for such amazing divine mercy, we shall want to devote our lives to the service of God and our neighbor—again, not to earn heaven, as if that were possible—but to glorify God for the salvation that he’s already bestowed upon us in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT

March 7, 2021

St. Uriel’s Church, Sea Girt, N.J.

Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19; 

I Corinthians 1:18-25; John 2:13-22

In today’s Epistle, Saint Paul writes of Christ as “the power of God and the wisdom of God.” A helpful theme for our reflections this morning is thus God’s power and God’s wisdom.

When we think about it, wisdom and power are a good combination. King Solomon won God’s favor when, in response to the offer of anything he desired, he asked for the gift of wisdom to govern God’s people well. A powerful ruler who lacks wisdom is capable of doing all sorts of harm and damage to his realm and those under his care. Conversely, a wise ruler who lacks power may have all kinds of great ideas for the betterment of humankind but will likely be unable to put them into effect. So, then, wisdom and power together are the optimal combination.

A key component of the biblical definition of wisdom, moreover, is the capacity and inclination to know and choose the good and to refuse the evil. The devil may be intelligent and cunning, but he’s devoid of wisdom—and so are all who follow his path of choosing evil over good. By contrast, when we say that God is infinitely wise, we’re also saying that God is infinitely good. So God combines in himself power, goodness, and wisdom.

In today’s Old Testament readings, God proclaims both his power and his wisdom. Giving the Law to Moses on Mount Sinai, God first identifies himself: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” It was a uniquely powerful God who could defeat Pharaoh and his army, liberate a collection of Hebrew slaves from bondage, and give them a new identity as a free people. That sort of divine power was unheard-of in the ancient Near-Eastern world. Most deities reinforced the social status quo rather than turning it upside-down. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was clearly a God of unprecedented power.

But then this all-powerful God reveals his wisdom by giving the Law, the Torah, summarized in the Ten Commandments. In Psalm 19 the psalmist celebrates the divine wisdom embodied in this great gift to God’s people Israel: “The law of the Lord is perfect, and revives the soul … The statutes of the Lord are just, and rejoice the heart … The commandment of the Lord is clear, and gives light to the eyes … The judgments of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether … By them also is your servant enlightened, and in keeping them there is great reward.” The Law was not burdensome or oppressive but, on the contrary, the great gift of God’s wisdom for ordering the life of his people Israel.

Today’s New Testament readings reveal, however, a gap—a great chasm, in fact—between divine wisdom and what passes for human wisdom, expressed most clearly in the difference between conventional human understandings of power and the way in which God’s power actually operates. Saint Paul writes to the Corinthians that God has made foolish the world’s wisdom. “For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and folly to Gentiles …” 

The “signs” that Paul describes his fellow Jews as seeking are mighty acts, like the Exodus of old, that demonstrate God’s power at work in the world. The cross, by contrast, signifies not power but weakness, suffering, and apparent defeat, and so functions as “a stumbling block” to those seeking signs of victory and glory. For the very same reason, the cross also seems “folly” to Gentiles, since it contradicts the worldly wisdom which values power and success above all else.

Nonetheless, Paul affirms, to those who are called, both Jew and Greek, the cross reveals Christ as the power of God and the wisdom of God: “For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” In other words, on Good Friday, by his suffering and death on the cross, Christ exercises the divine omnipotence, an unimaginable power to forgive sins, to heal and to restore a fallen creation, according to a divine wisdom that runs infinitely deeper than the wisdom of the world.

But the cross is not God’s last word. In today’s Gospel from John, we hear again this demand for signs. After Jesus cleanses the Temple in Jerusalem of the vendors and moneychangers, the Jewish authorities ask of him: “What sign have you to show us for doing this?” The Lord’s response is somewhat cryptic and enigmatic: “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” But, as John remarks, “He was speaking of the temple of his body.” The ultimate sign, then, vindicating Jesus’ identity and authority as the Messiah is his Resurrection from the dead on the third day. And it’s no accident that the early Christians saw the Resurrection as recapitulating the Exodus from Egypt. Just as in the Old Covenant God gave the great sign of his power by delivering Israel at the Red Sea, so in the New Covenant God gives a far greater sign of his power by raising Jesus from the dead.

After the Resurrection, John tells us, the disciples remembered that the Lord had said this. They’d already recognized his righteous anger in cleansing the Temple as fulfilling a verse from Psalm 69, “Zeal for thy house will consume me.” They were so immersed in the Hebrew Scriptures that they had absorbed the wisdom to understand at least some of what Jesus was saying and doing. And then, after Easter, they were able to recognize his resurrection as fulfilling his saying, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” As John puts it, the disciples “believed the scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken.” So the disciples relied on the divine wisdom to interpret the divine power at work in the Lord’s life, death, and resurrection.

Today’s readings thus invite us to immerse ourselves in the divine wisdom revealed in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, and most especially in the words and deeds of Jesus Christ, who is himself Wisdom incarnate. That wisdom teaches us in turn to trust that God is most powerfully at work precisely in those places in our lives where we feel weakest and most vulnerable. In our discussions in the Wednesday Lenten Study on Grace in the Wilderness, a number of the comments expressed a sense of fear and insecurity born of a situation so beyond our control. But the same God who, in infinite power and wisdom, delivered Israel from bondage in Egypt and raised Christ from the dead, will surely bring us through all this, and safely home to our journey’s end.

SECOND SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY

January 17, 2021

St. Andrew’s Church, Little Compton, R.I.

Psalm 135:1-5; 12-17; I Samuel 3:1-10(11-20); John 1:43-51

This season after the Epiphany focuses our attention on manifestations of God’s light in the world, culminating in the revelation of Jesus Christ as the Light Incarnate. And today’s readings emphasize that these epiphanies often take the form of God’s call addressed to specific individuals.

We may notice some striking parallels between the stories of the calling of the boy Samuel in the Old Testament reading, and the calling of Nathanael in the Gospel. For one thing, both recipients initially misunderstand what they’re hearing.

When Samuel is lying down to sleep in the Temple, the voice of the Lord calls to him, “Samuel, Samuel.” He initially thinks it’s the priest Eli, to whom he goes and says, “Here I am, for you called me.” But Eli answers, “No, I didn’t; go back to bed.” After three times, Eli realizes what’s happening, and instructs Samuel, “If he calls you again, just answer this: ‘Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.’”

In a parallel way, at the beginning of St. John’s Gospel, Philip finds Nathanael and tells him, “We have found him about whom Moses and the prophets wrote—Jesus the son of Joseph from Nazareth.” But neither understanding nor believing what Philip is telling him, Nathanael responds dismissively: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip wisely doesn’t try to argue the point but instead simply issues the invitation, “Come and see”—much as Eli had simply instructed Samuel to listen to what the Lord had to say.

So, Philip helps prepare Nathanael to meet the Lord, just as Eli once helped prepare Samuel to meet the Lord. In both cases the encounter is life‑changing. Samuel enters upon his vocation as a prophet; Nathanael enters upon his vocation as a disciple. Indeed, some Church traditions have identified Nathanael as St. Bartholomew, one of the Twelve Apostles. And all because Nathanael was willing to take up the invitation to “Come and see,” just as Samuel was willing to say, “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.” 

Taken together, these readings invite us to adopt a posture of openness and receptivity to whatever God wants to say to us now. Sometimes we need the assistance of a trusted advisor, guide, or mentor—as Eli was for Samuel, as Philip was for Nathanael. But most of all, we need to take the time to slow down, put aside our preoccupations and worries, and then say and mean the words, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”

This posture is more important than ever amidst the current political divisions in our nation. Confronted with images of people saying and doing outrageous things, it’s all too easy to get caught up in the emotions of the moment in ways that can be harmful to our own souls’ health, never mind the feelings and sensibilities of those around us. I’m not suggesting for one moment that we should overlook or condone public wrongdoing. But over the past couple of weeks, when I’ve found myself getting upset or worked up about something I’ve seen on television or read online, I’ve found it helpful—at least when I’ve had the presence of mind to remember to do this—to sit back, take a deep breath, and say to Jesus, “Lord, please help me to see all this from your point of view. Please help me understand what your love requires of me in this moment.” 

Then, having prayed such a prayer, take the time to be quiet and listen to whatever he might say in response. In this way, we gradually learn to respond in a Christian way to what’s going on around us, rather than getting swept along in the prevailing ideological currents of either the Right or the Left.

In 1939, the spiritual writer Evelyn Underhill told the story of a pastor in the Confessing Church in Germany facing arrest, trial, and imprisonment for his outspoken resistance to Hitler and the Nazi regime. This pastor is said to have remarked: While on the ocean’s surface it’s stormy and dangerous, still, three fathoms down it’s quite calm. He was of course using this underwater metaphor to describe that submerged place of stillness and silence where he encountered God and God’s peace—not as a form of spiritual escapism but precisely to be able to resurface with renewed strength and conviction to continue the struggle.

If we take the time to practice this type of inner listening in moments of outward stress and crisis, then, who knows, we may find ourselves called to some new form of creative discipleship as agents of God’s love, reconciliation, and healing in a divided and suffering world. We may not know in advance what form that call will take, but the good news is that God does know!

Nathanael discovered on approaching Jesus that Jesus already knew him. “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.” “Where did you come to know me?” “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” Whatever this mysterious exchange actually means—and generations of biblical scholars have spilled gallons of ink trying to figure it out—Nathanael realizes that Jesus knows him as only God can. And so, finally brought to the moment of surrender, he confesses, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God, you are the King of Israel!”

A basic tenet of Christian theological teaching is that God is closer to us even than we are to ourselves, and so knows us better than we can ever know ourselves. As the Psalm that we’ve just prayed together puts it: “Lord, you have searched me out and known me; you know my sitting down and my rising up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You trace my journeys and my resting places, and are acquainted with all my ways. Indeed, there is not a word on my lips, but you, O Lord, know it altogether.” I can’t help but imagine these verses running through Nathanael’s head as Jesus says to him, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.”

Secure, then, in the assurance that God knows us, with all our strengths and weaknesses, achievements and failures, opportunities and challenges, before we ever try to know him—and that he’s already called us, long before it even occurs to us to call upon him—we gain the courage to say, with Samuel, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” And then we stand ready, by God’s grace and strength, to do whatever he may ask of us next.

FIRST SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY

January 10, 2021

St. Andrew’s Church, Little Compton, R.I.

Psalm 29; Genesis 1:1-5; Acts 19:1-7; Mark 1:4-11

Well, it’s been a disturbing week, and I hope everyone’s okay. While I won’t be referring explicitly to recent and ongoing events, I heartily commend the message that the Presiding Bishop posted on Friday, which is available online; and I do think that today’s celebration of the Baptism of Christ—and, by extension, our own baptism—gives us grounds for hope and encouragement in unsettled times.

Today’s juxtaposition of readings is designed to convey the message that Christ’s baptism in the River Jordan signals a new creation. The Holy Spirit descending in the form of a dove upon Jesus as he emerges from the waters evokes the mysterious image from Genesis of that same Spirit—the ruach, wind, or breath of God—moving over the primordial waters in the beginning. By submitting to John’s baptism of repentance, Jesus, the sinless one, identifies himself with us in our fallen humanity, subject to sin and death, precisely so that we, through identification with him in our baptism, may rise to eternal life with him as members of God’s new creation.

Notice that in both the old creation and the new creation, God speaks. Not only is something done, but something is said. “In the beginning, God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” 

Psalm 29 echoes this divine speech in the wonderful poetic imagery of a thunderstorm coming in from the sea over the forests and mountains: “The voice of the Lord is upon the waters; the God of glory thunders; the Lord us upon the mighty waters.” The psalm uses the phrase “the voice of the Lord” no fewer than seven times: “a powerful voice … a voice of splendor” which “breaks the cedar trees … makes the oak trees writhe … [and] strips the forest bare.” At the Baptism, however, this same voice speaks words of loving affirmation and approval: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

Commenting on Christ’s baptism, the fourth-century Church Father Saint Gregory of Nazianzus writes of the Spirit’s descent and the voice from heaven as forms of divine witness: “The Spirit comes to him as an equal, bearing witness to his Godhead. A voice bears witness to him from heaven, his place of origin.” This was a new insight for me this year: at Christ’s Baptism, God bears witness to God! The First and Third Persons of the Holy Trinity bear witness to the Second Person, now incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. Just as in the beginning God said, “Let there be light,” so now God acclaims Christ as the Light of the world.

Following this divine example, we’ve similarly been committed at our baptism to bearing witness to Christ. In a few minutes, we shall be praying the words of today’s Collect: “Father in heaven, who at the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan proclaimed him your beloved Son and anointed him with the Holy Spirit: Grant that all who are baptized into his Name may keep the covenant they have made, and boldly confess him as Lord and Savior …”

Two of the promises we make at our baptism take this form: Question: Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Savior? Answer: I do. Question: Do you promise to follow and obey him as your Lord? Answer: I do. Then, in the Baptismal Covenant, there follows: Question: Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ? Answer: I will with God’s help.

“By word and example.” Notice there again the combination of something done and something said. A certain saying is sometimes misattributed to Saint Francis of Assisi: “Preach the Gospel at all times; when necessary, use words.” I hope it doesn’t come as too much of a disappointment to be told that he didn’t really say that. The things he did say had more to do with the preacher’s need to conform his life to his words in order to be credible—which in Francis’s case was certainly true as one of the greatest preachers and holiest saints of the Christian tradition.

The point is simply that in the fulfillment of our baptismal promises, good deeds by themselves aren’t enough. The very personal question that today’s readings invite us to consider is what more we might be doing in our own lives to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ,” and “boldly confess him as Lord and Savior.”

Let me be the first to acknowledge that this is easier said than done! We live in a society that doesn’t really encourage public professions of faith; and in the culture of our own beloved Episcopal Church we sometimes tend to be a bit reticent and reserved about discussing spiritual matters. After all, they’re very personal, and we don’t want to subject our most cherished beliefs, feelings, and experiences to dismissal and ridicule. That’s all very understandable.

Look, by contrast, at the example of the disciples whom Saint Paul encounters in Ephesus in today’s reading from Acts. When he asks them into what they were baptized, they reply, “John’s baptism.” But as John the Baptist himself says in today’s Gospel, “I have baptized you with water, but the one coming after me will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” So, when Paul baptizes and lays hands on these Ephesians in the Name of Jesus, the Holy Spirit comes upon them powerfully so that they speak in tongues and prophesy.

But let’s not let that image put us off. Not all Christians are called to speak in tongues and engage in what used to be called “religious enthusiasm.” (I love that phrase!) On the other hand, some are, and it’s not our place to judge them. Part of the richness of life in the Body of Christ is the diversity of gifts to be found in the various parts of the Church. 

The deeper point is that those disciples at Ephesus received the grace to proclaim Christ in their own time in their own way; and we’ve also received the grace to proclaim Christ in our own time in our own way. At our baptism we received the same Holy Spirit who descended upon Jesus at his baptism in the River Jordan, and who came upon those Ephesian disciples at their baptism at the hands of Saint Paul the Apostle. 

Our baptism itself empowers us to fulfill our baptismal promises. We need only ask God to stir up the Spirit’s gifts within us; then we’ll be given the right words to say in precisely those moments when we really need to say them. In this way, God will continue to equip us to keep the covenant we have made, and boldly confess Christ as Lord and Savior.