SOCIETY OF MARY ANNUAL MASS

Saturday 15 May 2021

S. Clement’s, Philadelphia

John 19:25-27

Saint John’s description of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Beloved Disciple at the foot of the Cross is wonderfully evocative. One of the blessings of hearing this Gospel today is that six weeks after Good Friday we return to the scene of Our Lord’s crucifixion, viewing it again from the new perspective of his Resurrection and Ascension.

Some biblical scholars argue that Our Lord’s words to his Mother and the Beloved Disciple amount to nothing more than a dying man’s last-minute disposition of family affairs, ensuring that his Mother will be provided for after he’s gone. And that’s indeed part of what’s taking place.

(Incidentally, this interpretation still supports the doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity, for if she and Joseph had had other male offspring after Our Lord’s birth, then this responsibility would have passed automatically to them, and no such provision would have been necessary.)

But as any serious student of the New Testament can attest, nothing is ever that simple in John’s Gospel. Beyond the level of literal meaning, Our Lord’s words frequently communicate profound and sublime truths at multiple levels of symbolic meaning. There’s no reason why this episode in particular should prove any exception to that general rule. And at the outset, I want to acknowledge my debt to the contemporary Catholic apologist Edward Sri in his 2018 book, Rethinking Mary in the New Testament, which I highly recommend. 

Sri points out that Our Lord’s words to his Mother and the Beloved Disciple follow a recurring pattern in Saint John’s Gospel. Character A sees Character B and makes a statement beginning with the word “Behold.” John the Baptist sees Jesus coming towards him, and declares, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” Then, after seeing Nathanael under the fig tree, Jesus remarks, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile.” In both cases, the word “behold” introduces a statement revealing some theological or spiritual truth concerning the person being spoken about. 

Our Lord’s words from the Cross follow exactly this pattern. Seeing his Mother, and the Beloved Disciple standing by, Jesus says to his Mother, “Woman, behold thy son.” And to the disciple: “Behold thy mother.” The pattern of words signals us that the relationship being named and called into being has not only a practical but also a theological and spiritual meaning.

To tease out the content of this meaning, we need to look at two more words that John uses. First is Our Lord’s form of address to his Mother: “Woman.” In that cultural and linguistic context the term is not disrespectful as it might be in contemporary English, but it’s nonetheless highly unusual. The second is the word “hour,” in John’s comment, “from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.”

Both words, “woman” and “hour,” have appeared together before, in John’s account of the miracle of water changed into wine at the wedding at Cana in Galilee. There, Our Lord also addressed his mother as “Woman,” remarking enigmatically, “My hour has not yet come.” Throughout John’s Gospel, Jesus has spoken repeatedly of his approaching “hour,” which the reader understands to be the hour when he will be lifted high on the Cross. So now, when John remarks that “from that hour the disciple took her into his own home,” we’re to understand that this hour he’s been speaking about all along now finally has come.

In this context, the form of address, “Woman,” clearly implies that Mary is the New Eve—Eve being of course the original Woman. The name Eve, we recall from Genesis 3:20, means “mother of all living.” We recall also that in Genesis 3:15, God tells the serpent who’s brought about humanity’s downfall, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head; and you shall bruise his heel.” On the Cross, then, the hour has finally come when the woman’s offspring defeats our ancient enemy, the devil.

That symbolism by itself would be rich enough. But there’s more. The words “woman” and “hour” occur together in yet another place in John’s Gospel. In his Farewell Discourse at the Last Supper, Our Lord tells a parable describing how his disciples will suffer when they see him betrayed, arrested, condemned, and crucified, but then will rejoice when they witness his Resurrection from the dead: “When a woman is in travail she has sorrow because her hour has come; but when she is delivered of the child, she no longer remembers her anguish, for joy that a child is born into the world.”

At the foot of the Cross, Mary figuratively fulfills this image of the woman in travail and sorrow because the hour has come. Some patristic writers indeed describe Our Lord’s sufferings on the Cross and his Mother’s concomitant sorrows as a kind of birth pangs of a new creation. A key result is precisely her new maternal relationship with the Beloved Disciple into whose care Our Lord entrusts her.

That reflection brings us to the significance of the Beloved Disciple himself. Traditionally, he’s been identified with the Apostle John, and I see no reason to dispute that identification. But again, nothing is ever that simple in the Fourth Gospel! In addition to being a specific person, the disciple whom Jesus loves is also a representative figure, an ideal disciple, a model of discipleship. So, when Our Lord names the Beloved Disciple the son of Mary, and Mary Mother of the Beloved Disciple, the unavoidable implication is that he’s establishing a new maternal relationship between his Mother and all Christian disciples in all times and places. Just as the first Eve was mother of all living, so Mary, the second Eve, becomes the Mother of all who live in Christ, and Mother of the Church.

The invitation and challenge of today’s Gospel for us, then, is to do as the Beloved Disciple did. From that hour he took Mary into his own home. Here, the English translation fails to capture the richness of the original Greek. In that sentence the verb “take” can also be translated as receive, accept, or welcome personally. More tellingly, the phrase translated “into his own home” reads more literally “into the things that were his own.” So an equally accurate translation might be that the Beloved Disciple “welcomed Mary into his life.” In that respect, he stands as a model and example for us all!

To any who may be seeking ways to welcome Our Lord’s Mother more fully into their lives, I heartily commend the Society of Mary as a fellowship of Christians who do our best to support one another in doing precisely that. If you think you might like to join us, then visit our website, somamerica.org, where you’ll find everything that you need to become a member. We’d love you to join us in our common endeavor to live into our identity as children of Mary, into whose maternal care Jesus, her divine Son, entrusted us in that most solemn moment recounted in today’s Gospel.

THE ASCENSION

Thursday, May 13, 2021

St. Uriel’s, Sea Girt, N.J.

Acts 1:1-11; Psalm 47 or 93

Ephesians 1:15-23; Luke 24:44-53

Have you ever noticed that our secular culture has appropriated certain Christian festivals but not others? You don’t have to grow up in a church-going family to know when Christmas and Easter are coming. The wider society even pays a tribute of sorts to All Saints Day with Halloween costumes and trick or treating.

But just think: when was the last time anyone sent you an Ascension card? Or gave you a Pentecost present? Or hosted a Trinity Sunday holiday party? I suppose we ought to be grateful that at least some of the holy days in our calendar have remained free from commercial exploitation. But on that account, we may be apt to overlook these days’ pivotal significance in the Church calendar.

Today we celebrate the Ascension of our Lord. Both the Ascension and Pentecost, which we shall celebrate a week from Sunday, are principal feasts of the Church Year, of equal rank with Christmas, Easter, and All Saints Day. Yet while our attendance today is pretty good, it’s still far less than the throngs who turn out for Christmas and Easter.

I suspect that the reasons for this relative neglect of the Ascension are not only cultural but also theological. Not only does the wider culture fail to notice the Ascension, but many believing and practicing Christians don’t quite know what to make of it either.

Perhaps the imagery itself is a bit embarrassing. Unlike ancient people, we’re no longer accustomed to imagining a three-story universe, with heaven up there in the sky, hell down there under the earth, and us here on the ground floor in between. The birth of Jesus we can understand; it’s easy to imagine the manger, the barnyard animals, and the shepherds. The resurrection of Jesus we can understand; the empty tomb and the appearances of one previously dead but now alive speak to our deepest longings and hopes.

But the same risen Christ lifting off from the earth and rising up into the clouds? It’s difficult to make sense of this picture when we no longer think of heaven as a place located spatially up there, in the sky. A friend once told me of a sermon he’d heard in which the preacher described Jesus as the first astronaut: the first human being to leave the earth’s atmosphere and travel through outer space. That description just highlights the absurdity of too literal a reading of the Ascension story.

So, what really happened on Ascension Day? The short answer is that we don’t know. Perhaps the story is just a symbolic way of saying that Jesus has returned to his Father in heaven. Or perhaps Jesus really did lift off from the ground and rise into the clouds. The priest Robert Farrar Capon once wrote that Jesus only needed to get up as far as the first cloud to make his point – a visual point that his disciples would understand in terms of their own world view and cosmology. The underlying principle is that God always accommodates himself to our human limitations by speaking in a language, whether verbal or visual, that we can understand. And the Ascension may be a case in point.

Either way, the Ascension is absolutely crucial to our Christian faith because it answers the question: Where is Jesus now? He is at the right hand of his Father in heaven, whence he reigns as Lord over all creation. And that answer makes all the difference in the world as to how we relate to him here and now.

Some great teachers from ancient history are figures to whom we can relate only through their writings or through what others have written about them. Think, for example, of Socrates. Like Jesus, he never wrote anything, but his disciples Plato and Xenophon wrote down many of his teachings in minutely detailed transcripts of his dialogues in Fifth Century BC Athens. Reading these dialogues, we get a wonderful picture of Socrates’ personality, his relentless questioning, and his deeply held principles. It’s admittedly difficult to disentangle the historical sayings of Socrates from the words that Plato and others put in his mouth as they developed their own philosophies. Either way, however, when we close the book, Socrates remains nothing more than a figure from the ancient past, someone whom we can know only through the medium of what others wrote about him so many centuries ago. Even though he may seem to come alive in these writings, the indisputable fact is that Socrates was, is, and remains as dead as a doornail.

Precisely the opposite is true of Jesus. Sometimes scholars make a distinction between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith – the Jesus of history being the figure whom we encounter in the pages of the Gospels; and the Christ of faith being the figure worshiped by the Christian Church throughout the centuries since.

The doctrine of the Ascension teaches us, however, that the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith are one and the same. The Jesus about whom we read in the Bible is not merely an historical figure who lived and then died in the ancient past, but rather one who is alive, even now, in the fullest possible sense of the word.

And so, to return to the question: Where is Jesus now? He’s at the right hand of his Father, reigning as Lord over all creation. Moreover, we can know him today not only as someone whose words and deeds we read in the Bible, but also as a living presence in our midst – and more specifically, as the one who still speaks to us in his Word, who still becomes one with us in his Sacraments, and who is still worthy of our deepest loyalty, allegiance, faith, and obedience.

SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER, YEAR B

May 9, 2021

St. Uriel’s, Sea Girt, N. J.

Acts 10:44-48; Psalm 98;

I John 5:1-6; John 15:9-17

The episode in this morning’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles is sometimes known as “the Gentile Pentecost.” In response to a vision from God, a Roman centurion named Cornelius has sent for the Apostle Peter, who in turn has received his own vision from God directing him to accept the invitation. So Peter has come to Cornelius’s house in Caesarea, the principal Roman port in the Mediterranean coast of Palestine. Cornelius is one of those Gentiles known at the time as “God-fearers”—that is, people who admire the Jewish religion and believe in the God of Jewish monotheism, but who are for whatever reason unwilling or unable to undertake the commitment involved in converting to Judaism and keeping all the precepts of the Jewish Law or Torah.

The reading begins as Peter has begun preaching to Cornelius and his household the good news of Jesus Christ and his resurrection from the dead. The Holy Spirit descends upon all present, they begin speaking in tongues as at the original Pentecost in the Upper Room at Jerusalem, and Peter commands that they should all be baptized.

This moment is absolutely pivotal in the development of early Christianity, making clear once and for all that the apostolic witness to the Lord’s resurrection is to be borne to all nations, not just Israel alone. Henceforth the Church, the community of those gathered in response to the Easter proclamation, is to comprise all the world’s peoples, fulfilling the words of today’s psalm: “all the ends of the earth have seen the victory of our God.”

We’re all in this together. Saint John writes in today’s Epistle that everyone who believes is a child of God. And Jesus says in today’s Gospel that he calls us no longer servants but friends. The Church is thus called to be a fellowship transcending all divisions of race, class, ethnicity, nationality, and language. (Incidentally, the symbolic point of the speaking in tongues is that differences in language no longer constitute a barrier to mutual intelligibility and understanding, for we’re all one in Christ Jesus. We shall have occasion to reflect further on this point in two weeks’ time, on the Day of Pentecost.)

So today’s readings challenge us, as our Lord puts it in the Gospel, to “love one another as I have loved you.” In too many times and places, however, the Church has failed to live up to its identity as a community where all are welcome and loved without distinction. All too often, parishes and congregations become exclusive clubs for “people like us”—those who speak and dress in a certain way, who live in the right neighborhoods, who belong to this or that political party, or who hold certain opinions on the controversial social and political questions of the day.

I don’t want to belabor the point, but in our fallen and sinful human condition, we do tend to find our greatest comfort zones among those whom we find most like-minded, and with whom we most readily identify. So we need to be reminded periodically that the Church is a universal fellowship, where we’re called to engage in the sometimes difficult and often challenging work of welcoming and including all comers, especially those with whom we may be instinctively less at ease.

But this challenge was the same for Peter and his companions that day in Caesarea almost two millennia ago. As the reading from Acts puts it: “The believers from among the circumcised who came with Peter were amazed because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles.” Peter himself had to overcome enormous personal reluctance, even revulsion, to enter the house of the Gentile Cornelius, whom he regarded as an unclean foreigner. But we may be glad that he did, because otherwise we wouldn’t be here today! Christianity could well have remained a movement existing purely within the confines of Judaism, and we Gentiles would never have had the opportunity to hear, receive, and respond to the good news of Jesus Christ.

We do well, then, to pray the same Holy Spirit that moved Peter and his companions to welcome Cornelius and his household into the Church, to move our hearts also, that we may do whatever we need to do in our own time to welcome those whom we might otherwise be tempted to regard as foreigners and strangers. Only then can we truly begin to realize and live into our identity as the Church Catholic.

All that I’m trying to say here is best summed up in one of my favorite hymns, written by Brian Wren in 1970, and set to the early American folk tune Land of Rest:

As Christ breaks bread, and bids us share

  Each proud division ends;

The love that made us makes us one,

  And strangers now are friends.

FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER, YEAR B

May 2, 2021

St. Uriel’s, Sea Girt, N.J.

Acts 8:26-40; Psalm 22:22-30

I John 4:7-21; John 15:1-8

A theme running through this morning’s readings is that of life—particularly appropriate for Eastertide, when we celebrate Christ risen from the dead to new, glorious, and eternal life, which he offers in turn to share with us.

Today’s Collect mentions the word life three times, first addressing God, whom truly to know is everlasting life, and then asking him to grant that we may so know Jesus to be the way, the truth, and the life, that we may follow in his steps the way leading to eternal life.

Saint John writes in the Epistle that God manifested his love among us by sending his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In Psalm 22 the psalmist acclaims the Lord as the source of all life: “My soul shall live for him; my descendants shall serve him.”

In the Gospel reading from John 15, Our Lord employs the extended metaphor of a vine and its branches to depict his life-giving relationship with his disciples: “I am the vine; you are the branches.” Just as the vine is the branches’ life, so the risen Christ is our life. Just as the branches wither and die when cut off from the vine, so apart from Christ we have no life in us.

So today’s readings invite and challenge us to stay connected as branches to the vine: to nurture our life-giving union with Christ, established in Holy Baptism, so that we may bear the fruit of good works and so prove to be his disciples.

Jesus uses the verb “abide” to describe this staying connected to the vine: “Abide in me and I in you … He who abides in me and I in him, he it is who bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” And again: “By this my father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.”

The Church’s tradition commends an array of spiritual practices by which may nurture our vital union with Christ. First and foremost is what we’re doing here this morning, and what we do here Sunday by Sunday, and week by week: celebrate Mass together and receive the Sacraments. Beyond that, we have daily prayer, Bible reading, and a host of devotional exercises by which we can stay connected to Christ as the source of our life.

The surest test of our success in this endeavor is love. Saint John writes in today’s Epistle: “By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his own spirit.” And the chief fruit of the Spirit in our lives is precisely love. As John writes: “If God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.”

The story of Philip the Deacon and the Ethiopian eunuch in today’s reading from Acts vividly illustrates what life in the Spirit manifesting itself in love looks like in practice. Notice how throughout the story Philip remains fully open and responsive to the Spirit’s promptings. At a time when the disciples are being scattered, fleeing Jerusalem during a persecution of the fledgling Church, an angel of the Lord tells Philip to take the road that heads southwest towards Gaza—the opposite direction from which he was intending to travel—and he goes as the angel directs. 

Having taken this road, Philip encounters a high-ranking Ethiopian official on his way home from worshiping in Jerusalem. (The way back to Ethiopia was south along the coastal road towards Egypt.) We don’t know whether he was Jewish, even though by tradition a Jewish community existed in Ethiopia since the time of the Queen of Sheba's visit to King Solomon centuries before. Since the twentieth century, by the way, large numbers of this ancient Jewish community have immigrated from Ethiopia to Israel. Like them, this Ethiopian official was almost certainly black, so it’s interesting and instructive for us that the first foreign convert to Christianity of whom we have record in the New Testament was a black African.

On account of his emasculation, however, he would have been barred from full participation in the Temple sacrifices. So perhaps he was ready for a newer and fuller relationship with Israel’s God than the official worship in Jerusalem was able to offer him.

In any case, the Spirit tells Philip to approach the chariot—an action that under most circumstances would seem presumptuous and risky. Philip nonetheless obeys, and the fruit of his obedience is the conversion and baptism of this important foreign official. The point to note is that the success of Philip’s ministry is due not so much to his initiative, courage, knowledge of Scripture, and eloquence—although these gifts undoubtedly played their part—as to his willingness to respond in love to the Spirit’s inner movements as the active expression of his life in Christ and Christ’s life in him. Then, in that wonderful flourish at the end of the story, the Spirit catches Philip up and takes him away north to Caesarea, so that the newly-baptized Ethiopian sees him no more but goes on his way rejoicing.

How wonderful it would be if our life in Christ were so rich and so deep that those whom we encounter gain such a glimpse of his love through us that they go on their way rejoicing! May God grant us the grace of his Spirit to be such conduits of Christ’s life and love in our world today. 

FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER, YEAR B

April 25, 2021

(Saint Uriel’s, Sea Girt, N.J.)

Acts 4:5-12; Psalm 23; 

I John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18

The Fourth Sunday of Easter is known as Good Shepherd Sunday because the Gospel reading is always from Chapter Ten of Saint John, where Our Lord identifies himself as the Good Shepherd. And down through the centuries, this image of Jesus has held enormous appeal for Christians of all ages.

Artistic depictions of shepherds often portray sentimental scenes of bucolic bliss. The shepherd sits on a hillside playing his panpipes and watching the flock graze contentedly in the meadow below. But while such serene images do perhaps capture one dimension of pastoral existence, in the biblical world shepherding could also be rough and dangerous work. In his excellent book A History of Warfare, British military historian John Keegan speculates that ancient peoples developed their fighting abilities by transferring skills they’d learned not only in hunting but also in herding. 

The Second Book of Samuel offers us a glimpse of this process when the young David volunteers to do battle against the armored giant of a Philistine, Goliath. King Saul protests that David is only a youth; what does he know about fighting? But David confidently replies: "Your servant used to keep sheep for his father; and when there came a lion, or a bear, and took a lamb from the flock, I went after him and smote him and delivered it out of his mouth; and if he arose against me, I caught him by his beard, and smote him and killed him. Your servant has killed both lions and bears; and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them, seeing he has defied the armies of the living God."

Shepherds needed to be prepared to fight not only against wild animals but also against thieves and brigands. A good shepherd thus literally put his life on the line for the flock. And so, in today’s Gospel, our Lord describes himself not once but four times as the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep; the third and fourth times he adds that he lays down his life that he may take it up again. In this way, he points to his death and Resurrection as the ultimate act of shepherding by which he will gather and unite his Church as one flock under one shepherd.

So, while it may not seem obvious to us at first glance, in today’s Gospel Our Lord invokes the image of the shepherd as warrior. He develops this picture in contradistinction to the hireling, who is not the sheep’s owner, and who flees at the approach of the wolf, which is given free rein to snatch sheep and scatter the flock: “He flees because he is a hireling and cares nothing for the sheep.” A hireling is someone who does a job simply for the money, and whatever else is in it for himself, so if the job becomes too difficult or dangerous, he doesn’t stick around, because his heart’s not in it. By contrast, Our Lord cares deeply and personally for his flock: “I know my own,” he says, “and my own know me.”

Today’s Gospel thus depicts the Good Shepherd first and foremost as a source of defense against danger. In a world of deadly predators, the Good Shepherd offers protection and safety. Hence the psalmist sings in the twenty-third psalm: “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” The point not to miss is that the rod and the staff are not only implements for herding and corralling but are also available to be used as weapons for fending off attackers.

In the life of our society, we entrust this shepherding function of defense against enemies foreign and domestic to those whom we authorize to bear arms and use lawful force on our behalf: the police, on one hand, who protect us against criminality at home; and the military services, on the other, who help deter and defend against threats of aggression from abroad. In both cases, we ask these brave men and women to put their lives on the line, like good shepherds, to provide the modicum of safety that we need to get on with our lives in a peaceful, well-ordered, and secure society.

In the vast majority of cases, I believe, the police and military do a wonderful job, discharging their duties with integrity and respect for those whom they serve. In what I believe is a small minority of cases, we’ve witnessed the excessive and wrongful use of force by rogue elements. By and large, though, I think we’re moving in the right direction as a society in instituting reforms to correct such abuses. Meanwhile, overseas, we’ve recently seen entire military establishments turn on and attack the very societies they’re meant to protect and defend, as appears to be the case in such places as Belarus and Myanmar. Such out-of-control armed forces fall far from their calling to be good shepherds of their people.

In the spiritual realm, the Church’s leaders, your clergy, are similarly called to be good shepherds, protecting our flocks as far as we can from all harm and danger. This responsibility ranges from protecting against the spiritual dangers of false teaching and unsound practices to ensuring compliance with officially-mandated health and safety protocols in a time of pandemic. From what I’ve seen so far here at St. Uriel’s, you’ve been blessed with a succession of truly good shepherds—rectors, deacons, and associate clergy—who’ve done their best to safeguard the interests of the flock. In other places, however, we’ve witnessed sickening examples of clergy exploiting and abusing those in their charge for their own gratification. So we do well to pray constantly for all entrusted with the care and protection of our communities, that we may fulfill our calling to be good shepherds, and not hirelings who care nothing for the sheep.

The sad reality is that while those to whom we entrust our physical and spiritual protection usually discharge their duties faithfully and responsibly, in a few cases they don’t. We live in a fallen world where those in authority, those whom we respect, occasionally betray their calling and let us down. The good news, regardless, is that we can always trust Jesus to be our Good Shepherd. He knows his own and his own know him. And so, in the words of today’s Collect, we pray that when we hear his voice, we may know him who calls us each by name and follow wherever he may lead.

 

THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER, YEAR B

April 18, 2021

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

Acts 3:12-19

Luke 24:36b-48

During this season of Eastertide, the Sunday Mass readings revisit Christ’s resurrection from different angles so that over the course of these six weeks we build up a cumulative picture of the Paschal mystery in its many dimensions. Today’s readings in particular focus our attention on the relationships among the Resurrection, the Holy Scriptures, and the living out of our faith in the world today.

In the Gospel reading that we’ve just heard, the Risen Jesus appears in the Upper Room on the evening of the first Easter Day. Initially the disciples have no idea what to make of what they’re experiencing. As Luke puts it, “they were startled and frightened, and supposed they saw a spirit.” So, first of all, Jesus needs to correct that misapprehension by showing them his hands and feet, and reassuring them that it’s really him: “handle me, and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have.”

In the ancient world, the appearance of spirits of the dead, especially the recently dead, were not at all uncommon. (Some say that it’s not that uncommon today either, but that’s a discussion for another time.) The point being made here is that Christ’s Resurrection belongs to a totally different category. The Risen Jesus is neither a ghost nor (for that matter) a resuscitated corpse, or an undead zombie. No, the new life into which he’s entered is not the stuff of horror movies but the precise opposite: in his wonderful new existence he’s more gloriously and fully alive than ever before. Nonetheless, between the former life and the Resurrection life there’s continuity as well as discontinuity. His flesh and bones are still tangible; his hands and feet still bear the marks of his wounds; he’s even able to eat a piece of broiled fish! Biological human life in all its materiality and physicality is caught up into the eternal realm of the spirit.

Then, having cleared up the disciples’ misconceptions about what they’re seeing, Jesus goes a step further. He opens their minds to understand the scriptures, showing how the Law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms all foretold that the Christ should suffer, die, and on the third day rise again.

Let’s dwell for a moment on that remarkable statement: “He opened their mind to understand the scriptures.” The Resurrection is not self-explanatory. The disciples can only fully understand the events they’re experiencing in the wider narrative context of the scriptures, but at the same time their understanding of that scriptural narrative is utterly transformed by their experience of those events. So, in a mutual and reciprocal process, the scriptures interpret the Resurrection, and the Resurrection interprets the scriptures. And then Jesus sends his disciples into the world, having opened their minds to a new understanding of the scriptures as fulfilled in the wondrous events to which they’ve been made witnesses.

Our reading from the Acts of the Apostles takes up the story of the apostles’ preaching the good news to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. It follows a curiously similar pattern to the Gospel reading. Peter and John have just healed a cripple in the precincts of the Jerusalem Temple. Amazed and filled with awe, the crowds witnessing this miracle have run to gather around these wonderworkers.

So, just as in the Gospel reading, a misconception first needs to be cleared up. Just as Jesus had to explain that, no, he wasn’t a spirit or a ghost, so Peter has to explain that, no, he and John haven’t performed this healing by themselves: “Men of Israel,” he declares, “why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk?” Outward appearances to the contrary, Peter and John are not the stars of this show.

Peter proceeds to explain the miracle’s meaning by proclaiming the Lord’s resurrection, concluding that “the faith which is through Jesus has given this man perfect health in the presence of you all.” Then, to borrow Luke’s phrase from the Gospel, Peter opens their minds to understand the scriptures. He shows that God foretold by the prophets that the Christ should suffer and be raised, and he calls on the people gathered round to repent of their sins and receive the blessing promised to Abraham’s posterity. So here, again, we see the same pattern of mutual interpretation as in the Gospel. The miracle is not self-explanatory and its meaning can only be fully understood in light of the Lord’s death and resurrection in fulfillment of the scriptures—and those same scriptures can in turn only be fully understood in and through their fulfillment in the Lord’s resurrection, as well as in such wondrous deeds as this miraculous healing of a cripple.

Now, I would propose that this process works in a similar way for us today. God continues to be present and active in our midst, although we don’t always recognize his presence and activity for what it is. In today’s Collect, we pray God to “open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold [Christ] in all his redeeming work.” That’s a wonderful prayer! And a key component of this beholding of Christ’s redeeming work, both in our own lives and in the world about us, is the opening of our minds to understand the scriptures, which sensitizes us to the many ways in which God is present and active in our world. Conversely, our direct experience of God’s presence and activity in our lives helps us to understand what the scriptures were talking about in the first place.

Such recognition presupposes systematic, disciplined, and prayerful reading of God’s Word. Before the disciples could have their minds opened to understand the scriptures, they needed to know the scriptures; and we may be sure that as devout Jews they’d been raised in the synagogue to know them inside out. For this reason, the Church encourages us to make use of such practices as the Daily Office and similar liturgical and devotional schemes that immerse us in the scriptures and psalms day by day, week by week, year by year.

In my time here at St. Uriel’s so far, it’s become clear to me that this is a parish community in which the scriptures are indeed taken seriously, along with worship and prayer. You have a hunger for and a delight in God’s Word. This attentiveness will stand you in good stead during the present interim period. In the coming weeks and months you’ll likely be asked to reflect on your history as a parish and identify the ways God has been active in your midst, leading and guiding you along the way. The parish story fits in turn into the much larger story of God’s gracious dealings with his people throughout history. And I’m confident that God’s gift to you will be not only the opening of your minds to understand the scriptures, where that story is definitively set forth, but also the opening of the eyes of your faith to perceive Christ’s redeeming work in your midst. For those are but two sides of the same coin.

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.