SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER

April 11, 2021

St. Uriel’s, Sea Girt, N.J.

Acts 4:32-35; Psalm 133 

I John 1:1-2:2; John 20:19-31

The Collect for the Second Sunday of Easter introduces two themes that stand out in today’s readings: reconciliation and fellowship. It begins by addressing God “who in the Paschal mystery hast established the new covenant of reconciliation,” and then asks that “all who have been reborn into the fellowship of Christ’s body may show forth in their lives what they profess by their faith …”

The word for fellowship in New Testament Greek is koinōnia, which is also often translated “community.” However translated, it refers not to a casual circle of easygoing friends and acquaintances, but to the sort of intimate bond that develops among an otherwise diverse group of people who share some deep common commitment. In the Church, the basis of all true community or fellowship is our shared faith in God the Holy Trinity, and our shared membership in the Body of Christ.

Fellowship and reconciliation naturally go together. To maintain our fellowship in Christ serious interpersonal disputes among the Church’s members need to be identified, named, and resolved through mutual repentance and forgiveness. So reconciliation makes fellowship possible; and fellowship in turn facilitates reconciliation when disagreements arise, as they inevitably will, we being the fallen creatures that we are. A community whose members are unable to be reconciled with one another is likely to split apart and eventually disintegrate. Conversely, communities that actively foster reconciliation among their members strengthen their ability to grow and flourish.

Today’s reading from Acts describes the deep fellowship among the earliest Christian disciples in Jerusalem. “The company of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no-one said that any of the things that he possessed was his own, but they had everything in common. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were possessors of land or houses sold them, and [laid] the proceeds … at the apostles’ feet; and distribution was made to each as any had need.” 

Now, I don’t think that this passage is necessarily meant to be read as a utopian blueprint for an ideal Christian society (though many have read it that way). Rather, it serves as testimony to the power of the apostles' preaching of Christ's resurrection. Reconciled to God, the members of the Jerusalem Church find themselves reconciled to one another—overcoming the age-old division between rich and poor, those of high degree and low—even to the extent of sharing all earthly goods in common. This transformation illustrates the difference that Christ’s resurrection makes, in fulfillment of the words of Psalm 133: “Oh, how good and pleasant it is, when brethren live together in unity!” 

Today’s reading from the First Letter of John takes up these twin themes of fellowship and reconciliation. The Apostle writes: “that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you may have fellowship with us; and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ … If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.” Notice how John links fellowship—which he mentions three times in this passage—with being cleansed from sin by the blood of Jesus. In other words, reconciliation with God makes possible the reconciliation with one another that is the sole foundation of any genuine Christian community.

Similarly, in Saint Luke’s account of the risen Lord’s appearance in the upper room on the evening of the day of resurrection, after Jesus stands among the disciples and wishes them Peace—Shalom—he delegates to them his authority to forgive sins: “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” This text has many implications, not least concerning the ordained priesthood’s authority to grant absolution to repentant sinners. But the implication I want to highlight is that this duty to forgive extends to all Christians, because only by mutual forgiveness and reconciliation can we experience that harmony with God and one another—that Shalom—that Christ wishes his disciples when he says to them, and to us, “Peace be with you.”  

In this context, I suspect that the deepest significance of the story of Doubting Thomas—seemingly everyone’s favorite character in the Gospels—is that before he can finally see and touch the risen Jesus, he must rejoin the disciples’ fellowship. Luke doesn’t tell us why Thomas was absent or where he was that first Sunday evening when the risen Jesus appeared to the other disciples in the upper room. What seems significant to me, however, is that Jesus didn’t just go and appear separately to Thomas wherever he was, even though he was clearly capable of doing so. Instead, he waited for Thomas to be reunited with the community one week later. 

That detail suggests in turn that if we want to come to know the risen Jesus, we normally need to do so in the midst of our Christian community. As someone once put it, Christianity is a team sport, not a solo performance. The good news is that once Thomas rejoins the fellowship, the risen Christ does come to him, answering his questions and overcoming his doubts. Our God is a God of second chances par excellence, and that is good news for us all!

These observations suggest some questions that we might profitably reflect on during the coming week. In what ways do we need to be restored to the fellowship of Christ’s body to reawaken and renew the fullness of our faith? More specifically, whom do we need to forgive, and whose forgiveness do we need to seek, in order to take our appointed place in Christ’s new covenant of reconciliation?

I hasten to add that none of this is anything we can do on our own, but only something that Christ does in us. As today’s reading from Acts says of those first Christians in Jerusalem, “With great power the apostles gave their testimony … and great grace was upon them all.” That power and grace could only come from on high. Again, in the Gospel, “Jesus breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit …’” Relying not on ourselves, then, but on the grace that God continually offers us, we find the power to realize true reconciliation and fellowship in the Body of Christ, showing forth in our life what we profess by our faith.

 

EASTER DAY: THE SUNDAY OF THE RESURRECTION

4 April 2021

St. Uriel’s, Sea Girt, N.J.

Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118:1-2, 18-24; 

I Corinthians 15:1-11; John 20:1-18

Yesterday evening, we celebrated the Great Vigil of Easter. This morning’s Mass, of Easter Day, the Sunday of the Resurrection, has a slightly different emphasis. I don’t want to overblow the distinction, but the Easter Vigil focuses on the mystery of what happens in darkness of the tomb between Good Friday and Easter morning: Christ’s descent among the dead and his miraculous Resurrection to new and eternal life. It’s also pre-eminently a baptismal liturgy. The Mass of Easter Day focuses, by contrast, on what happens in the daylight: the finding of the empty tomb, and the risen Lord’s appearances to chosen witnesses. The readings that we’ve just heard highlight three of those witnesses: Mary Magdalene, Peter, and Paul.

The appearance of the risen Jesus to Mary Magdalene as recounted by Saint John is surely one of the most poignant scenes in the Gospels. She is arguably the first human witness to the Resurrection in that wonderfully tender and emotional encounter in the garden outside the empty tomb.

The second witness introduced by today’s readings is the Apostle Peter, who testifies to his experience of the risen Lord in a sermon he preached on the streets of Jerusalem fifty days later, on the Jewish Feast of Shavuot, better known to us as the Day of Pentecost. Peter proclaims to the people: “They put [Jesus] to death by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him and made him manifest, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.” 

Two details are worth noting in what Peter says. First, the risen Jesus appeared not to everyone, but to chosen witnesses. Second, their eating and drinking with Jesus highlights the Resurrection’s physical reality. The risen Jesus is not a ghost or a spirit or an angel, for such immaterial beings don’t eat and drink. This detail also hints that eating and drinking together will continue to be a primary means of fellowship with the risen Lord in the years to come, as Christians gather week by week to break the bread and share the cup in his Name.

Our third witness is Saint Paul, who relates in his First Letter to the Corinthians how the risen Jesus appeared first to Cephas (that is, Peter), then to the twelve, then to five hundred brethren at one time, then to James (that is, the Lord’s kinsman who became the first Bishop of Jerusalem), and then to all the apostles. (It’s interesting that in Paul’s mind a distinction clearly obtains between the original Twelve and a number of unspecified others who also bear the title “apostle.”) Last of all, Paul writes, “as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.” In other words, Paul is telling us, Christ’s appearances didn’t end with his Ascension into heaven. As we know from the Acts of the Apostles, Paul’s life-changing encounter with the risen Lord on the road to Damascus took place at least several years later.

So, although there were many witnesses to the Lord’s Resurrection, today’s Scripture readings present us with a representative three: Mary Magdalene, Peter, and Paul. And to each of these three chosen witnesses, Christ gives more or less the same command: Go and tell others what you’ve seen, heard, and experienced of me.

Outside the empty tomb, Jesus says to Mary Magdalene: “Go to my brethren and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my father and your father, to my God and your God.’” Obeying the Lord’s command, Mary Magdalene then goes and tells the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and relates the things he’s said to her. For this reason, Mary Magdalene is sometimes given the title “Apostle to the Apostles.”

In his sermon on the Day of Pentecost, Peter concludes his account of the risen Lord’s appearances thus: “And he commanded us to preach to the people, and to testify that he is the one ordained by God to be judge of the living and of the dead. To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him received forgiveness of sins through his name.” Similarly, the purpose of Paul’s Damascus road experience is not only to divert him from his persecution of the Church and convert him to being a follower of Jesus but also to commission him to his lifelong calling of being an apostle to the Gentiles.

In all three cases, the Resurrection appearances and the apostolic preaching go hand-in-hand. The risen Christ appears to chosen witnesses—Mary Magdalene, Peter, and Paul—precisely so that they can go in turn to proclaim the good news in ever-expanding circles radiating out into all the world.

And so it continues to this day. The challenge for us, then, is to carry forward our witness to the reality of Christ’s Resurrection in our lives so that others may have the opportunity to know the joy of the risen Lord in their lives.

Our natural reaction to this challenge may well be, “What? Who, me? You must be mistaken! You must have me confused with somebody else.” We’re apt to feel a certain sense of unworthiness to such a high calling, and that’s not totally inappropriate. But there’s the rub. More often than not, the Lord chooses the least likely people to be his witnesses.

While there’s no biblical warrant for the tradition that Mary Magdalene was a reformed prostitute, Luke’s Gospel does record that she’d had seven demons driven out of her. So it seems fair to say that she had a troubled past, at the least. And then Peter, before he became the Prince of the Apostles and the rock on which Christ would build his Church, denied Jesus three times before cockcrow in what must have seemed to all involved an unforgivable betrayal.

But Saint Paul wins first prize for a (not unrealistic) sense of unworthiness. He follows his account of the Lord’s resurrection appearances with the heartfelt protest: “I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” Nonetheless, bearing witness to the transforming power of Christ in his own life, he concludes: “By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain.”

So, while we may think of Mary Magdalene, Peter, and Paul as great saints of the Church, otherworldly haloed figures in stained-glass windows, they were in reality highly fallible and often deeply troubled human beings. The good news is that the risen Christ chose them to be his witnesses anyway. And if he so chose them, he can certainly so choose us, as well.

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.