Sermon for Proper 23, Year A

Parable of the Wedding Feast, Russian, 14th Century

Matthew 22:1-14

New Testament commentators sometimes draw a distinction between two types of parables found in the Gospels: parables of grace, and parables of judgment. On the whole, I find it a helpful distinction.

Most of us are familiar with the parables of grace. By means of various images and figures they depict God as infinitely loving, forgiving, and willing to go to any length necessary to rescue and redeem the lost: for example, the father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son; the Shepherd who goes in search of the one lost sheep in the wilderness; the woman who sweeps her house up and down looking for a lost coin. These images of a loving and gracious God resonate well with us. 

But then, in a number of other parables, the happy ending is tempered by images of judgment, condemnation, and punishment. The goats are separated from the sheep; the tares are winnowed from the wheat; and, in today’s Gospel, not only are those who refused to come to the marriage feast put to the sword and their city put to the torch, but even one of the guests gathered in at the last minute is found lacking the required wedding garment and cast into outer darkness.

One strategy that many people adopt in reading the Scriptures today is simply to pay attention to the passages that they like and ignore the ones they don’t like. But that won’t do. If the Bible really is God’s Word as we claim it to be, then we need to wrestle with all of it, not just the bits that appeal to us. We need to take seriously not only the parables of grace but also the parables of judgment.

An ancient technique of interpreting biblical stories is to distinguish the different layers of meaning in the text. The first and most obvious layer is the literal meaning. But at the level of literal interpretation, the parable in today’s Gospel presents us with some details that are puzzling, to say the least.

When the king sends his servants the second time to extend the invitation to his son’s wedding feast, those invited seize the servants, abuse them, and kill them: an extreme way to refuse a dinner invitation. Then it gets totally bizarre. While dinner is getting cold, the king sends his troops to destroy the murderers and burn their city. Declaring that those originally invited were not worthy, the king sends his servants out into the streets to gather in everyone they find. And so we have the surreal picture, almost a dreamscape, of a banquet hall filling with guests, against the backdrop of a night sky lit up by the flames of the burning city in the distance.

For me, the strangest detail of all has always been the man with no wedding garment. After all, these guests have just been gathered from the streets into the wedding hall with no warning. How can anyone expect them to be properly dressed for a wedding?

Some recent commentators suggest, however, that according to the customs of the ancient world, the details of the parable are not as strange or absurd as they first seem. Great banquets and feasts usually didn’t happen at a precise date and time, announced in advance. Guests normally declined the first invitation, because it merely served as a warning that the preparations were under way. So it was customary to send a second invitation when the feast was finally ready. 

Those invited to the marriage feast of the king’s son were almost certainly the nobles and aristocracy of the kingdom. For them, to turn down the second invitation to such a great state occasion was an act of defiance bordering on treason. Their killing of the king’s servants suggests that this is precisely what they were about: rebelling against the authority of both the king and his son. In this light, sending troops to burn their city was a completely plausible response to a political challenge. In the ancient world, this sort of thing happened all the time.

For the original audience, only two features of the story would have come as a surprise. The first was the king’s sending his servants into the streets to invite the common people to the banquet. That would have been unheard of.

The second would have been the guest without a wedding garment. For in marriage feasts in the ancient world, at least according to some commentators, these items of clothing were given to the guests as they arrived. So, the man without a wedding garment has probably refused the garment offered to him at the door. His attitude is perhaps one of stubborn defiance: “if you want me to come in, fine, but you’ll have to take me as I am.” Confronted with a show of such blatant disrespect, the King has no choice but to have him tossed out.

The literal interpretation does not, however, exhaust the parable’s meaning. By his introduction, Our Lord makes it clear that the parable points beyond itself to something greater: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a marriage feast for his son.” The point of the parable is not what it tells us about biblical marriage customs, or the politics of the ancient world, but what it tells us about the kingdom of God.

Read at this level, the parable’s message is that God’s grace abounds in the invitation extended to all people everywhere to come and partake of the feast of the kingdom of heaven. In the end, the king tells his servants to gather everyone in, both bad and good. While everyone without exception is invited, those who end up excluded are precisely those who refuse the invitation. In the parable, those invited make light of the invitation and go off, one to his farm and another to his business. In their minds, they have more important matters to attend to than the wedding feast of the King’s Son. And, if my interpretation is accurate, even the guest cast out at the end could have chosen to accept the wedding garment offered to him as he entered the hall.

So, in the end we have a parable of both grace and judgment. God extends his grace to all of us in the invitation to the wedding feast of his Son. In the Church we understand our weekly and daily celebration of the Holy Eucharist as an anticipatory foretaste of that very same feast: the marriage supper of the lamb. God invites us all to come to Mass and join in the Church’s life of worship, prayer, study, service, celebration, and thanksgiving. 

When we reject that invitation, it is not so much God who judges us as we who invoke judgment upon ourselves. We’re all invited to the wedding feast; every Sunday affords us the opportunity once again to accept the invitation, or to decide that we’ve got more important things to be about. By developing the habit of responding faithfully to God’s invitations in this life, however, we prepare and dispose ourselves to be found worthy in the next.

Requiem Mass for the Departed Brethren of the SSC *

Mosaic of Crucifixion
National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows
Belleville, Illinois

Given at the Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows, Belleville, Illinois

What a great privilege it is to join in the offering of Requiem Mass for the repose of the souls of our departed brethren in the Society of the Holy Cross! An integral component of our vocation as Catholic priests is the offering of the Holy Sacrifice for both the living and the dead. Likewise, we do well to teach those committed to our spiritual care the duty and joy of praying for the souls of the faithful departed.

This morning, I want to propose that our contemporary culture presents us with an opportune moment for preaching the Catholic doctrines of Purgatory and prayer for the dead. These doctrines contain a message of hope that people today are longing to hear. The time is ripe. But first, a few reflections on the nature and purpose of this Requiem Mass will help illustrate why this is so.

Let’s think for a moment about our relationships with those who have gone before us in this Society. Some of them are priests about whom we’ve read in the history books, like Lowder and Mackonochie. Others are priests we’ve known personally, who perhaps influenced us by their examples and teaching. Still others are priests whom we never knew at all. Regardless, we take this opportunity to offer our prayers that they may rest in peace until the Day of Resurrection.

Now, narrow the focus a bit and think specifically about those priests, now departed, who had the greatest influence on us while they were alive. We need not confine ourselves to priests of our Society. But let’s call to mind whomever it was whose example inspired us to consider a call to the priesthood. Or who mentored us at significant times in our discernment, formation, and training. Or who gave us the special words of support, advice, and encouragement that we particularly needed at some point. Perhaps some of these figures are still here with us in this earthly life, in which case we can certainly thank God for them, pray for them, and perhaps thank them personally. But as we get older, we find that more and more of them have joined the ranks of the faithful departed.

Now, as we think on them, I will venture with near certainty that two features stand out simultaneously in our memories. First is whatever it was that we found influential or inspirational about them: their learning, their wit, their compassion, or their dedication to their flock. In many cases, I daresay, they were men of genuine holiness. But second, and this is crucial, they were not without their faults and flaws! Perhaps they could be cranky or bad-tempered. Perhaps they were prone to excesses of one sort or another: food, drink, or worse. Like all of us, they had their besetting sins. Sometimes, indeed, that is precisely what makes our stories about them so entertaining!

So, at one and the same time, they were good and even holy men; and yet they were sinners. This dual reality sets the agenda for what we’re about this morning. We can almost imagine a covenant between the living and the dead members of our Society. They influenced and inspired us during their earthly lives with the vision of priesthood to which we found ourselves called. And in return for all they gave us, we fittingly offer two things on their behalf: first, our prayers for their souls to speed them on their journey into the fullness of God’s presence; and second, our perseverance in the priestly vocation to which their examples and guidance inspired us. We pray for their souls in the recognition that when they died God wasn’t yet finished with them – just as we hope that those who come after will pray for us. That is what this Requiem Mass is all about. And we do our best, with God’s help, to keep faith with our forebears by persevering in our priestly vocation. That is what this entire Synod, indeed the entire life of our Society, is all about.

Now, to return to my earlier point: today, the Catholic doctrines of Purgatory and Prayer for the Departed offer a message of hope that people in our culture desperately long to hear. An integral component of our perseverance in our priestly vocations will be regularly to offer Masses and prayers for the dead.

In my pastoral experience over the past twenty years or so, I’ve noticed two broad attitudes towards death and life after death among many of the people to whom I’ve ministered as they’ve either faced their own deaths or the deaths of their loved ones.

The first basic attitude might be called a functional atheism. It takes the view that this earthly life is all that there is, and once you’re dead, you’re dead. The light is extinguished; life is annihilated; all is darkness. A hundred years ago or so, people feared death because they feared hell. Today, few people seem to fear hell but plenty of people fear nonexistence.

Over and against functional atheism, the Catholic tradition affirms the reality of life after death. We pray for the faithful departed because we have the assurance that in Christ they are alive. That confident proclamation is good news that people today, especially the bereaved, need to hear, but so often don’t hear from those who have pastoral responsibility for them.

The second basic attitude is the diametric opposite of the first: what might be called a functional universalism. It cheerily affirms not only that our departed loved ones are still alive, but also that they’re already in heaven in the fullness of glory. From this basic attitude arises the enormous cultural pressure in a great many of our churches to turn funerals into those gaudy celebrations that have aptly been described as “premature canonization ceremonies.”

The difficulty with this second posture is that is subtly leads those who are bereaved into denial of the very real shortcomings, flaws, and sins of the departed. Again and again, I hear the bereaved say things like, “He must be in heaven because he was such a good person.” The irony is that when the departed was alive, this was often not what this person was saying about him. On the contrary, he was often a source of enormous irritation and exasperation to those around him.

Against functional universalism, the Catholic tradition affirms not only that hell is a very real possibility for those who knowingly, willing, and decisively reject God’s love and goodness, but also that when we die none of us is ready to see God face to face. With the exception of Our Lady, at the time of our departure we all have some way to go in the way of further purification and sanctification before we’re ready to enter into the fullness of God’s presence.

The good news is that we don’t have to deny the all-too-real shortcomings and flaws of the departed in order to entertain the hope that they’re ultimately destined for heaven. Instead we pray for them, humbly asking God, by the merits of Christ, to bring to perfection the good work that he began in them in this life.

In the 1930s and 40s, the British writer and anti-war activist Vera Brittain offered an interesting insight about comforting those who mourn. In the First World War, her fiancé, her brother, and two of her best friends were killed in the trenches – devastating losses, the emotional wounds of which she carried for the rest of her life.

When we encounter people who’ve experienced such losses, we often don’t know what to say; and we may well be tempted to think that there is nothing we can say. But in her 1942 book Humiliation with Honour, Vera Brittain registers her disagreement with those who say that mere words can never be much help: “The power of words,” she writes, “is greater than anyone can calculate. … The use of the right words at the right time can transform the existence of a man or woman from desolation to glory. But you may have to live a whole lifetime before you learn how to choose those words.”

I don't know about you, but I have certainly have not yet lived that whole lifetime! I have learned, however, that the one thing I can say that’s almost always pastorally helpful is: “Your loved one is in my prayers.” Better still, “I will remember him at Mass.” Or best of all, “I will say Mass for him.” Regardless of their personal beliefs, those recently bereaved are often touched, sometimes even deeply moved, when they hear that we’re praying for the one whom they’ve lost – perhaps because we’re offering them so much more than mere words.

So, today we keep faith with those who’ve gone before us in the Society of the Holy Cross – not only by offering this Requiem Mass for the repose of their souls, but also by rededicating ourselves to the priestly vocation they exemplified to us during their earthly life. And a key component of perseverance in our priestly vocations must always be offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for the living and the dead.

(*  Note: SSC stands for Societas Sanctae Crucis, Society of the Holy Cross.)

Feast of the Holy Cross (Sermon at the 10 am Mass)

The proper name of today’s Feast is the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. In the year 326, in the newly Christian Roman Empire, the Empress Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine, had come to Jerusalem on a mission to locate the sites of Golgotha and the Holy Sepulcher. She directed excavations at the place identified by local tradition; and, lo and behold, at the bottom of a cistern three crosses were found. The problem was that no one could tell which one was the Lord’s cross, and which two were the crosses of the thieves crucified with him.

At this point Bishop Macarius of Jerusalem intervened and proposed a solution. Crippled and sick people were brought to touch each of the three crosses. The one that produced miraculous healings was thus identified as the True Cross. Bishop Macarius then raised up the True Cross for all the people to see – and the Latin word verb to lift or raise up is exaltio. Hence the Exaltation of the Holy Cross really means the lifting or raising up of the Holy Cross. The paradox we celebrate today is the transformation of an instrument of shame and death into an effective sign of healing and life.

You may have noticed that following my name in print I often append the initials SSC. Occasionally, some have wondered if they stand for Saint Stephen’s Church – but, no, they’re actually the initials of the Latin name of the society of priests to which I belong, Societas Sanctae Crucis, the Society of the Holy Cross.

During the coming week, I’ll be traveling to St. Louis to attend the annual SSC Synod. This gathering is always held as near as possible to Holy Cross Day, the 14th of September. The Society of the Holy Cross originated in 1855 in the Church of England, when six priests met at a mission house in the Soho District of London to form as association for mutual support and encouragement, continuing priestly formation, practice of the spiritual disciplines, and the cultivation of personal holiness.

These men already knew well what it meant to take up the cross. They had already dedicated their lives and ministries to the Catholic revival in the Church of England. For this reason, they had already encountered hardship, privation, opposition, and costly personal sacrifices.

They found themselves excluded from the Church of England’s more comfortable livings. Instead, they had gone into the industrial slums of the English cities and had founded mission parishes in dangerous and squalid surroundings. Their efforts to reintroduce Catholic ritual and ceremonial into Anglican worship had drawn fierce opposition. Protestors occasionally disrupted their liturgies and sometimes riots even broke out in the streets around their churches. Their bishops often kept them at arm’s length and refused to visit their parishes out of disapproval of their ritual innovations.

The founders of the SSC understood that if they were to persevere in the face of such challenges, they needed to cultivate a systematic approach to the Christian life that would sustain and strengthen them in their work. Within a year of their founding, the SSC organized the first retreats held in the Church of England since the Reformation featuring extended periods of silence punctuated by spiritual addresses. Members of the Society took vows in which they committed themselves to a Rule of Life including daily Mass and daily recitation of the Divine Office.

These priests understood that to bear the cross that had been laid on their shoulders in the form of Catholic witness in the Church of England, they had to intentionally embrace a life of spiritual discipline and self-sacrifice. In this way, they would lift up the cross so that it might become a sign of healing and salvation in the lives of their flocks. So, to remind themselves of this dimension of their priestly vocation, they named their society after the Holy Cross.

The Feast of the Holy Cross reminds us that the same principle holds good for all Christians, not just for clerical members of a particular priestly society. All authentic Christian discipleship entails taking up the cross and following Jesus in one way or another.

This message is not particularly popular these days. Many people seem to want a version of Christianity that will meet their needs on their own terms – whether for spiritual comfort, aesthetic gratification, intellectual stimulation, or simply the fellowship of like minds and kindred spirits. But, as you’ve heard me say many times before, religious consumerism is the opposite of authentic Christian discipleship.

Every once in a while, someone comes into my office and tells me that they’re feeling spiritually dry and not getting anything much out of Sunday Mass anymore. My initial response is almost always to ask what else they’re doing to nurture their relationship with God the rest of the week. Are they setting aside a time for prayer every day? Are they reading any of the daily offices? Are they coming to any of the weekday Masses? Do they ever attend retreats or quiet days? How long has it been since they’ve made their confession?

It often seems to come as a surprise when I explain that the Anglo-Catholic way really comprises a complete package, of which these practices are integral components. While the Sunday Mass is the most important part of the package, it’s not fair to expect it to bear the weight of sustaining one’s spiritual life if one is neglecting all the other parts. The system is a comprehensive whole, and each part works best only when all the other parts are working as well. So, if you want to get more out of Sunday Mass, you need to put in more – and not just on Sundays but throughout the week as well.

At this point, the person sometimes protests. I’m already doing everything I can. My life is too difficult; I’m being pulled in too many different directions; there are too many demands on my time and attention. But that’s precisely the point. Already a cross is laid on your shoulders. The best way to find the strength to bear that cross is by practicing the spiritual disciplines that will help you face all the other demands and challenges of your life.

It’s difficult but not impossible. We can’t always expect the practice of Christianity to be easy, comfortable, or convenient. There are indeed times when it requires hard work and positive self-sacrifice.

The promise of Holy Cross Day, however, is that the way of the cross is the only true path to genuine fulfillment, joy, happiness, and peace. By having suffered and died upon it, Our Blessed Lord has transformed the cross from an instrument of shame and death into a sign of forgiveness, healing, hope, and salvation. But in a sense, it’s not enough just to take up the cross and follow Jesus. Like Bishop Macarius of Jerusalem so many centuries ago, we’re called to lift up the cross and raise it on high, so that people may look upon it and be saved.

Proper 19, Year A (Sermon at the 8 am Mass)

Matthew 18:21-25

For many people, forgiving those who’ve hurt us is one of the most difficult demands of the Christian Gospel.

Some years ago, in the movie “Dead Man Walking,” Susan Sarandon played the nun, Sister Helen PreJean, who became the spiritual advisor to a convicted murderer on death row in the days leading up to his execution. One of the film’s most dramatic moments involved Sister Helen’s encounter with the parents of the two young people murdered by the prisoner. They desperately wanted the execution to go forward; and they deeply resented the idea that this nun should be attempting to bring the condemned man any solace or comfort in his last days. Their lives were consumed by the desire for retribution. And watching the film, one’s reaction might well be, “Who can blame them?” If we were in their position, forgiveness would probably be the last thing on our minds.

Yet, Jesus teaches us to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” And the parable in today’s Gospel embodies our Lord’s teaching of forgiveness.

Today’s Gospel reading picks up where last week’s left off. There, Jesus was teaching the disciples how to deal with fellow Church members who wrong them in some way. What Jesus said was: If your brother sins against you, take the matter up with him privately; if he refuses to listen to you, take two or three witnesses; if he refuses to listen to them, tell the matter to the whole Church; if he refuses to listen to the Church, then cast him out.

So, at the beginning of today’s Gospel reading, Peter replies, “All right, Lord. But suppose he repents and asks to be forgiven? How many times must I forgive him? As many as seven times?” In other words, doesn’t there come a point when someone’s hurt you one time too many, and you just can’t forgive them again no matter how contrite or sorry they are?

Peter probably thinks he’s being enormously generous in offering to forgive as many as seven times. But Jesus says no, not seven times, but seventy times seven. The phrase “seventy times seven” is a biblical euphemism that means an infinitely large number. For the Christian, there must be no limit to our willingness to forgive.

We need to understand, however, what forgiveness is and what it isn’t. When someone has hurt you, forgiveness does not mean waving your hand and saying, “Oh, that’s all right, it doesn’t matter.” It’s not all right, and it does matter. If it really were all right, there’d be nothing to forgive.

To ask forgiveness is to admit that one has done wrong. And to forgive is not to excuse the wrong, or to pretend that it didn’t happen. Rather, forgiveness means overcoming our instinct to strike back. It involves letting go of our desire for vengeance and retribution.

Forgiveness of this sort does not mean that a violent criminal shouldn’t go to jail. It does not mean that a chief financial officer who’s embezzled company funds should get to keep either his job or the money. It does not mean that a woman should continue to live with an abusive husband. It does not mean that the Church should move priests who’ve molested children from parish to parish and cover up their crimes. In each of these situations, decisive steps are necessary to safeguard the community and to protect the innocent.

But even in tough situations like these, forgiveness means refusing to be ruled by the hatred, malice, vindictiveness, and desire for revenge that can consume us and poison all our attitudes and behavior. It means refusing to let our lives and identities be defined by the ways in which we’ve suffered or been victimized. After a would-be assassin shot him in Saint Peter’s Square, Pope John Paul II exemplified Christian forgiveness when he went to the prison a year later and personally forgave his attacker.

The parable in today’s Gospel teaches us how to become forgiving people. A king releases a slave from a debt of ten thousand talents. But then the same slave refuses to forgive a debt of a hundred denarii owed to him by another slave.

The key to the story is the difference between the two debts. A denarius was a silver coin roughly equal to the day’s wage of a laborer. But a talent was equivalent to 6,000 denarii. So, the ten thousand talents that the servant owed the king was an astronomical sum. There was no way that the servant could have paid off the debt. On the other hand, the one hundred denarii that the servant was owed by his fellow servant was an infinitesimal fraction of the ten thousand talents. So, it cost the king infinitely more to forgive the debt owed by the servant than it would have cost the servant to forgive the debt owed by his fellow servant.

Our Lord’s point is that we find the motivation to forgive those who’ve sinned against us only when we realize how much more God has forgiven us. To become truly forgiving people, then, we need to realize our own sinfulness and our own need for forgiveness.

Only then can we begin to appreciate the sheer magnitude of Christ’s love for us. He died on the cross to forgive us our sins and reconcile us to God. It cost him far more to forgive us than it will ever cost us to forgive anyone else. So, to become forgiving people, we need to keep our gaze fixed on the cross. Then, and only then, will we know the freedom and joy that comes from being able to forgive others just as God has forgiven us.

Howard Thurman, the African-American preacher and civil rights leader, tells of visiting an elderly black man in hospital. During the visit, the man declared, “You’re looking at a man who cannot die. Not long before the Civil War I barely escaped from the plantation with my life. I was accused of doing something I had not done. The master had me dragged to the smokehouse. I was stripped to the waist and my hands were tied to one of the crossbeams. I was whipped until I fainted, then revived with buckets of cold water and flogged again.

“The next thing I remember was the darkness of the night and someone was cutting me loose and helping me dress in fresh clothes that hurt my skin. Oh, how it hurt! Whoever this was helped me to escape into the woods. Finally I came to the river and got across the Ohio to freedom. Ever since I have been kept alive by hatred for the man who beat me. I suppose he has long since died. The only thing is, I know I dare not die until I forgive him.”

Thurman visited the man many times over the next few weeks. One day he entered the room, and the old gentleman greeted him in great excitement. He said, “It happened last night. It finally happened.” A few days later, the old man died. He knew that none of us can find true freedom, in life or in death, until we learn to forgive.

Note: Portions of this sermon appeared in the "Sunday's Scriptures" section of The Living Church, Vol. 249, No. 4 (September 7, 2014), 59. The Howard Thurman story originally came from a commentary by Will Willimon in Pulpit Resource.

Sermon for Proper 18, Year A

Sunday 7 September 2014

Matthew 18:15-20

The great historian of diplomacy Herbert Butterfield once remarked that to understand the dynamics of conflict among nations and peoples, one need only spend a month in a typical parish choir. In addition to being a distinguished historian, Butterfield was a Christian thinker of some depth, and my guess is that he spoke from experience.

Life in the Church – not just the choir but every part of the parish – does not always exhibit the harmony, peace, and love to which we’re called as Christians. Today’s Gospel explicitly acknowledges this hard reality. Jesus is under no illusions. He knows that short of Heaven itself conflicts and disputes will take place even among members of the same congregation. Moreover, in the earliest days of Christianity, as for much of the Church’s history, the people with whom one worshiped on Sunday were also one’s neighbors: the people with whom one lived and worked, and bought and sold, throughout the rest of the week. So conflict within the parish was potentially divisive and disruptive to the social fabric of the entire community.

To avoid such division, our Lord gives some straightforward, practical directions on what to do when another member of the Church hurts, offends, or wrongs us in some way. These instructions consist of three steps.

First, “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.”

In other words, the person with the grievance must take the initiative to rectify the problem. Yet, how often this is not what happens! We suffer some insult or injury and, instead of taking the matter up with the perpetrator, we start sulking, feeling sorry for ourselves, and nursing a grudge. Or, worse still, we complain to everyone but the person who’s offended us. Nothing stirs up division and dissension more than people grumbling and complaining behind one another’s backs. On certain occasions, I’ve unwittingly said or done something to upset someone, only to discover weeks, months, or even years later that that person told everyone else about it but me! But here our Lord instructs us: If someone has offended you in some way, first of all take it up with that person: directly, and privately. That way, you might be able to reach some sort of mutual understanding and achieve reconciliation without stirring up trouble and making the situation worse.

Sometimes this direct approach works; sometimes it doesn’t. So, then, the second step: “If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of one or two witnesses.”

The biblical background here is that the Old Testament repeatedly requires that no one should ever be condemned on a charge of wrongdoing except on the evidence of two or three witnesses. One witness alone is not enough without corroboration. The New Testament carries this principle over into the life of the Church, as for example when Saint Paul writes “Any charge must be sustained by the evidence of two or three witnesses” (2 Cor. 13:1).

As an aside, every so often a parishioner will come to me and make some accusation against another parishioner: so-and-so is saying this and doing that! And almost always, my instinctive response is to tell them that I really can’t do anything about it unless and until I’ve heard the accusation from more than one person. Otherwise, it’s just uncorroborated hearsay. With one or two exceptions, the biblical principle still holds good today: admit no charge except on the evidence of two or three witnesses.

So, our Lord is saying that if we can’t work out our differences one to one, then we need to bring one or two others into the picture. There’s always the possibility that these third parties might be able to help us see some merit in the other person’s position that we can’t see by ourselves, and help mediate between the two points of view.

But if this process of mediation fails, and our mediators agree that we’ve been wronged, then we’ve gained the necessary two or three witnesses when we go to step three: “tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”

The early Christians took this command, “tell it to the church,” quite literally. When members of the congregation had personal complaints against one another, they would stand up in church on Sunday morning and air their grievances. Then the whole congregation would listen and try to arbitrate, or render a judgment. The Eucharist could not proceed until both parties were reconciled, or else until the guilty party, if unrepentant, had been expelled from the assembly.

Of course, this procedure caused more problems that it solved, and was gradually abandoned. It survives in symbolic form in our liturgy, however, as the Passing of the Peace, which is really a symbolic gesture of the forgiveness and reconciliation with all of our brothers and sisters in Christ that’s required of us before we approach the Lord’s Table together.

But what can it mean in today’s world to “tell it to the church”? The understanding that eventually gained acceptance was that telling it to the church could be equally well accomplished by telling it to one of the church’s authorized representatives, namely the clergy.

In other words, if another member of the parish hurts or wrongs you in some way, first, take the matter up with that person directly. If that doesn’t work, try getting one or two friends to mediate. And if that doesn’t work, then bring the matter to one of the parish clergy. I say this not because we clergy relish the thought of meddling in our parishioners’ disputes—we don’t. Yet discord among the members wounds the whole Body. So, the Church has a legitimate interest in promoting reconciliation and forgiveness among all its members. And one of the responsibilities to which the clergy have been ordained is known as the ministry of reconciliation. Frankly, when people in the parish are at odds with one another, it is the clergy’s business.

Even within the Body of Christ, conflicts and disputes are inevitable. We’re still sinners, after all, and we’ve all got a long way to go before God is finished with us. What makes Christianity distinctive, however, is not the absence of conflict, but rather the ability to achieve forgiveness and reconciliation when conflicts arise, as they inevitably will.

In today’s Gospel Jesus gives some practical directions on how to work towards forgiveness and reconciliation. The point of the three steps is that we must do everything we possibly can to be reconciled and at peace with one another. The goal is not to cast anyone out, but rather to keep everyone within the fold. Christ has shown his love for us by forgiving us and reconciling us to God. And it’s precisely in mutual forgiveness and reconciliation that we begin to show Christ’s love to the world.


Note: Portions of this sermon also appeared in the "Sunday's Scriptures" section of The Living Church, Vol. 249, No. 4 (September 7, 2014), 58.

Feast of Saint Bartholomew (Sermon at the 10 am Mass)

Hereford Mappa Mundi, c. 1300

Hereford Cathedral in England houses a treasure of medieval cartography: the Mappa Mundi, or Map of the World, dating from approximately the year 1300. Part of the map’s fascination is the glimpse it gives into what might be called the literal world-view of pre-modern European Christians.

The map is circular, in the shape of a disc, and is oriented differently from modern maps. The vertical axis has East at the top and West at the bottom, while the horizontal axis has North to the left and South to the right.

Significantly, the city of Jerusalem occupies the spot at the very center of the map, marked by a cross. The half-disc of the map above Jerusalem represents Asia, with India and the Ganges at the very top. The two bottom quadrants represent Europe to the left and Africa to the right, divided by the Mediterranean Sea, extending vertically from just below Jerusalem to the bottom, terminating at the Pillars of Hercules. Even though the map was made in England, the British Isles are squeezed in at the very perimeter, to the lower left, at the far edges of Europe.

The Mappa Mundi expresses the early Christian worldview in which Jerusalem stands at the center of a divided into three great continents: Africa, Asia, and Europe. Into these three continents, after Christ’s death and resurrection, the Twelve Apostles went forth from in all directions, preaching the Gospel and planting the Church.

For easily understandable reasons, however, the New Testament and subsequent Christian history focused on the missionary journeys of Paul and the other few apostles who brought the Gospel west, into Europe, through what is today Turkey into Greece and ultimately to Rome itself, the center of the Empire. Saints Peter and Paul both died as martyrs in Rome. Three centuries later, the Roman Empire itself adopted Christianity as its official religion. For these reasons, it’s easy to fall into the trap of misidentifying ancient Christianity as a primarily European phenomenon.

Nothing could be further from the truth. From the first century on, beginning with the Twelve Apostles themselves, Christian missionaries went forth from Jerusalem not just west into Europe, but in all directions, sometimes well beyond the frontiers of the Roman Empire: south into Egypt, Ethiopia, and Libya; southeast into Arabia and even as far as the coast of India; east into Persia and Syria; northeast into what is today Georgia and Ukraine; and north into Armenia and the Caucasus. But their missionary journeys, sermons, and miracles were not recorded in the New Testament. We know about most of them only from oral traditions and legends that were written down many years later.

The Apostle whom we commemorate today, Saint Bartholomew, is a case in point. His name appears in the lists of the Twelve that appear in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. He is very likely the same person who appears in the first chapter of John’s Gospel under the name Nathanael – the one who asks, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” and of whom Jesus says, “Behold, indeed, an Israelite in whom is no guile.” If that is the case, then Nathanael would have been his first name, and Bartholomew – meaning “Son of Tolmai” – would have been his last name.

That he was one of the Twelve Apostles does tell us something about the shape of his life. The Twelve were the hand picked inner circle of disciples. They traveled about from town to town and village to village with Jesus as he preached, taught, and healed the sick. They were with him at the Last Supper on the night before he died. After his Resurrection, he appeared to them and commissioned them to preach the Gospel to all nations.

Beyond that, however, the New Testament is silent about Bartholomew. Tradition has it that he traveled to such far away places as India and Ukraine, and finally suffered martyrdom in Armenia by being flayed alive. In art he’s depicted holding a tanner’s knife, the instrument of his death. For this reason also, we wear red today, as on all Feasts of Martyrs.

This morning, I want to make two points about how Bartholomew speaks to us across the centuries in the midst of the world we live in today. First, as the horrific events of this summer have reminded us, ancient Christian communities continue to this day in places like Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt and Ethiopia. These communities are not the product of European expansion and colonization beginning in the so-called Age of Discovery, but have been there since the earliest centuries of the preaching of the Gospel.

Second, according to the tradition, all but one of the Twelve Apostles ultimately died as martyrs for their faith. The one exception was John, the Son of Zebedee, who lived to a ripe old age and died in Ephesus in what is today Turkey. Being an apostle meant being willing to give up everything to follow Jesus, including ultimately life itself. The word martyr means “witness” and the Apostles, including Bartholomew, were among those who bore witness to Christ even unto death.

Today, the Christian descendants of the communities founded by the Apostles in the Middle East are similarly being subjected to the persecution that makes martyrs: especially in areas where radical Islamic jihadism is on the rise. The point not to be missed about the recent murders of Christians in Iraq is that in each case -- at least in the case of the adults -- the Christians appear to have been given the option of converting to Islam. Only when they refused to betray Christ were they beheaded.

Thus, they have borne witness to their faith in Christ as more precious than life itself. In this sense, their deaths do not represent defeat; they have conquered their enemies and won the martyr’s palm of victory. And I am convinced that long after the so-called Islamic State has been consigned to the dustbin of history, the Universal Church will have in its calendar of saints a day of solemn commemoration of the Martyrs of Iraq.

In the meantime, we may be confident that Saint Bartholomew and the rest of the apostolic martyr band are welcoming their children home. This month we have been praying every day for persecuted Christians and religious minorities throughout the world, and especially in Iraq and Syria. Today we invoke Saint Bartholomew’s prayers for them as well. In the early centuries of Christianity, the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church; and we may rest assured that it will be so again in the twenty-first century.

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

Ruins of the Temple of Pan, Caesarea Philippi

Matthew 16:13-20

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Proper 15, Year A

Matthew 15:21-28

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Proper 9, Year A

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Matthew 10:40-42

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friday 7 March 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ash Wednesday -- Homily at the Evening Mass

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Saint Michael and All Angels -- Sunday Sermon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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