Sermon for the Third Sunday after Pentecost

The Mustard Seed, by Khazakstani artist Nelly Bube

PROPER 6, YEAR B

Ezekiel 17:22-24
Mark 4:26-34

On this Second Sunday after Pentecost, we return to what is sometimes called the “green season,” variously known in the 1979 Prayer Book as the Sundays after Pentecost, in the 1928 Prayer Book as the Sundays after Trinity, and in the contemporary Roman Missal as the Sundays of Ordinary Time. In the Western Church, green vestments are worn during this season.

The standard interpretation – I don’t know whether it’s the actual reason or an after-the-fact rationalization – is that green symbolizes life and growth. It’s the beginning of summer in the northern hemisphere; and the green vestments inside the church match the leafy trees, green grass, and bushes outside. How appropriate it is, then, that two of today’s readings feature vivid images of trees and plants: Ezekiel’s oracle of the cedar tree, and our Lord’s parables of the growing harvest and the mustard seed.

The passage from Ezekiel about the cedar tree requires a bit of interpretation. Ezekiel is writing when the Babylonians have conquered Judah, destroyed Jerusalem, and taken the king, nobility, and leading citizens of the land into exile in Babylon. It is a time of despair, when all hope for the future seems lost.

In the passage from which today’s Old Testament reading is taken, the prophet presents an allegory. An eagle with long wings and great pinions swoops down and breaks off the top branches of a great cedar of Lebanon. The eagle carries the branches off and plants them in a place beside abundant waters. But instead of growing into another cedar, the branches become a low spreading vine. In the interpretation that follows, the prophet explains that the cedar is the house of Israel, the eagle is King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, and the broken off branches are the exiles, transplanted to the great city beside the River Euphrates.

Then, in today’s reading, God himself declares that he will take a sprig from the top of the cedar and plant it on the mountain height of Israel. It will sprout branches, bear fruit, and grow into a noble cedar; under it the beasts of the field will dwell and in the shade of its branches birds of every sort will make their nests. The prophecy’s meaning is fairly transparent. God is promising that from among the exiles in Babylon he will bring back to Jerusalem – the “mountain height” – a royal heir to the throne of David to reign over a restored kingdom of unprecedented power and glory. It is a message of hope in gloomy times. Even though the house of Israel has been reduced to a creeping vine by the waters of Babylon, God will yet make it a noble cedar towering over all the trees of the earth.

In today’s Gospel, our Lord draws on this tradition of Old Testament prophecy to tell two parables of the Kingdom of God. Jesus uses this phrase, the Kingdom of God, to signify that future state of affairs where, in the words of the Lord’s Prayer, God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven – which is manifestly not the case in the present age. It means God’s final triumph over the powers of evil, and the consummation of his reign over all creation.

In the first parable, Jesus likens the Kingdom of God to a farmer scattering seed upon the ground. The days and weeks pass; the farmer continues his routines of sleeping and rising, night and day. By a mysterious process the farmer does not understand, the seed sprouts and grows, producing first the blade, then the ear, and then the grain. Finally, when the grain is ripe, the farmer puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.

In the second parable, Jesus likens the Kingdom of God to a grain of mustard seed: the smallest of all seeds when sown; and yet the greatest of all shrubs when grown, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade. That last detail is an obvious allusion to the Ezekiel prophecy in the Old Testament reading. Mustard plants are apparently common around the shores of the Sea of Galilee, and can grow to a height of six to nine feet. By itself, the detail about birds building nests in their shade may be a bit of hyperbole, but it makes perfect sense in relation to the Ezekiel prophecy.

Taken together, the parables emphasize two features of the Kingdom of God. First is the contrast between small beginnings and enormous endings. The abundance of the harvest contrasts with the scattering of seeds from which it grows; ditto for the great mustard bush which grows from the smallest of all seeds. Second, while we wait for the harvest, the planted seeds are growing towards maturity by a process that is largely hidden from human sight and understanding.

Our Lord’s message is, like Ezekiel’s, one of hope. Even though we live in a world that seems very far from the Kingdom of God, nonetheless the Kingdom is already present in our midst as seed. Just as the planted seed has its own inner dynamism and power of growth that is finally revealed at the harvest, so too does the Kingdom of God, which will be finally revealed on the Last Day.

Indeed, it may not be too much of a stretch to suggest a Christological interpretation in which the seed of the Kingdom is Jesus himself, planted by his Father in this world at his Incarnation in the womb of the Virgin Mary. In his earthly life his divine power and glory remain largely hidden, and seem utterly absent on the cross, but will be revealed in fullness when he returns at the end of the age.

The message of Ezekiel’s oracle and our Lord’s parables is good news for us today whenever we’re tempted to despair. We live in an age of growing secularization, loss of faith, and declining church attendance. But today’s readings show that this is nothing new; in many different forms, God’s people have faced far worse situations in the past. God is still at work in his proverbially mysterious ways; his kingdom is living and growing. At odd moments we catch glimpses of its beauty; much of the time it remains hidden from us. So we keep faith and persevere, trusting in God’s promises that when the harvest comes his Kingdom will be revealed in all its power and glory as having been present with us, and in us, all along.

Sermon for Corpus Christi

To be posted soon

Sermon for Trinity Sunday

Holy Trinity, Antonio de Pereda, c. 1611-1678

Isaiah 6:1-8

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory.” The mysterious angelic beings known as the seraphim call out these words in the prophet Isaiah’s vision of the Lord seated upon his throne.

The word “holy” occurs frequently in the Bible: in Hebrew qadosh, in Greek hagios, in Latin sanctus. Yet although we often hear it in church, perhaps we don't give much thought to its meaning. So, on this Trinity Sunday, it seems appropriate to reflect on holiness. What does it mean to say that something or someone is holy?

The simple meaning of the word is “set apart.” The Bible uses the word “holy” in two ways: first, as an attribute of God; and second, as an attribute of certain people, places, and things. Throughout the Bible, God is repeatedly described by such phrases as “the Holy One of Israel.” But what does it mean to say that God is holy?

The answer, I think, is that holiness or “set-apartness” is an attribute of something that lies completely outside the normal range of empirical human knowledge. To call something holy is to say that it has a quality that is not of this world. Used in this sense, the term applies above all to God, who stands entirely above and beyond this world. To call God holy is to point to his infinite perfection, goodness, power, and beauty.

Yet, in the biblical record, God chooses to enter into this world in such a way as to reveal himself and make his presence known and felt. When we human beings experience the holy one present in our midst, our typical reaction is one of amazement, awe, fear, trembling, and often a profound sense of unworthiness. The prophet Isaiah’s immediate reaction to his vision is to cry out, “Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the king, the Lord of Hosts!”

Such a reaction is the natural human response to what the great Swiss theologian Karl Barth called the infinite qualitative gulf that separates God from his creatures. Yet God himself bridges the gulf by speaking a word of reassurance and forgiveness. In Isaiah’s case, this word comes when one of the seraphim takes a burning coal from the altar and touches it to the prophet’s lips, saying, “Behold … your guilt is taken away, and your sin is forgiven.”

In relation to God, then, the term holiness signifies the divine transcendence, otherness, goodness, purity, and perfection—the experience of which evokes human reactions of awe, fascination, fear, trembling, and unworthiness. But the word is also used of people, places, and things. We speak of people as holy when their relationship with God has become so close that they begin to reflect something of God’s holiness. We speak of places as holy either because they’ve been consecrated to the worship of God, like this church building, or on account of extraordinary manifestations of God’s presence and power that have occurred in those places, such as the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, or the Grotto at Lourdes. Again, we speak of certain objects as holy because they’ve been set apart for God’s service—examples include holy water, the sacred vestments worn at Mass, or the sacred vessels of the altar.

But people, places, and things are holy only in a secondary and derivative sense. They’re holy not in and of themselves but on account of their association with God, who alone is holy in and of himself.

The words of Isaiah’s seraphim—holy, holy, holy—are well familiar to us as the opening line of the Sanctus, said or sung during every Mass just before the Eucharistic Prayer: “Therefore with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious name, evermore praising thee, and saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts, heaven and earth are full of thy glory, glory be to thee, O Lord most high!”

Isaiah saw his vision in the context of worship in the Temple. Here at S. Stephen’s, we conduct our worship with all possible reverence and beauty, partly to dispose ourselves to be receptive to the experience of God’s holiness. We cannot manufacture such experiences by our own efforts because they lie beyond our human capabilities and can only be received as gifts from God. But clearly our Anglo-Catholic worship here on earth closely resembles the pattern of the angelic worship in heaven as described in various places in Scripture. Who knows when we might catch an echo of the seraphim singing the Sanctus along with the choir? Who knows when we might even catch a glimpse of the Lord’s train enveloping the temple as the house fills with smoke?

Now, the Sanctus shares with Isaiah’s song of the seraphim the same threefold acclamation—holy, holy, holy. Is this threefold repetition merely a rhetorical device that serves to emphasize God’s holiness, or does it point to some essential characteristic of God himself? The classical Christian answer is that it points to the threefold character of God who has revealed himself to us as one God in three Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

In sermons on Trinity Sunday in other years, I’ve emphasized that the Church’s doctrine of the Trinity does not really require explanation because it is itself the explanation. The early Christians experienced God as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; the doctrine of the Trinity articulates this experience in a way that makes clear, on one hand, that we do not worship three Gods but one God (we are not tritheists but monotheists); but, on the other hand, that our threefold experience of God corresponds to the deepest reality of God’s own inner nature and being. God does not merely appear to us in the guises of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—that would be the heresy of modalism—but rather at the deepest level of his being really is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

As worked out at the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople in the fourth century, the doctrine of the Trinity shows how this can be so by distinguishing between God’s divine nature, which is one, and his divine Persons, who are three. Thus God is simultaneously three-in-one and one-in-three: three divine Persons sharing the same divine nature, consubstantial, co-eternal, and co-equal.

This year, I want to emphasize that the Holy Trinity is not so much an intellectual puzzle to be solved, as a mystery to be worshiped and adored. Throughout the year, at every Mass, whenever we join in saying or singing the Sanctus, or whenever we hear it sung by the choir, the threefold repetition of "holy, holy, holy" reminds us that we worship a God who is not only the Holy One, but also the thrice holy: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. To him be glory, worship, adoration, and praise, now and to the ages of ages. Amen.

Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter

Duccio di Buoninsegna,
 Jesus Appears to his Disciples behind Locked Doors, c. 1308-1311

April 19, 2015

Acts 3:12-19
I John 3:1-7
Luke 24:36b-48

An interesting thought experiment consists of grouping friends and acquaintances into different categories according to how one would handle invitations to dinner with them. Offhand, I can identify four such categories among the people I know.

The first category consists of those who really are no more than passing acquaintances, not very close, who I don’t imagine would ever have occasion to invite me to dinner, nor I them. Not that we necessarily have anything against one another, it just wouldn’t occur to us. That could always change, of course, if we got to know each other better or discovered some interest in common.

The second category consists of somewhat closer acquaintances who might invite me to dinner, or whom I might invite to dinner, but all rather formally, issuing an invitation and setting the date weeks in advance. The meal itself might be rather elaborate, with wine, candlelight, and a carefully chosen menu.

The third category consists of friends with whom I feel so comfortable that if we were doing something together during the day, I might say, “Hey, come on back to my place and we’ll send out for pizza.” Or, if I had stopped by their house for some reason, they might issue the invitation on the spur of the moment: “Won’t you stay and join us for supper? It’ll be ready in half an hour.”

The fourth and final category consists of those very close friends and relatives with whom I would think nothing of showing up at their house and announcing, “I’m hungry. What have you got here to eat?” Or indeed, who would think nothing of showing up at my house and saying the same thing. I don’t know about you, but I can count those people on the fingers of one hand, which is probably just as well.

Before we dismiss the fourth category as the epitome of bad manners and rude behavior, notice that it’s precisely what the risen Christ does in today’s Gospel: “And while they still disbelieved for joy, and wondered, he said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate before them.”

Have you ever tried to imagine what Jesus would say if he appeared to you? Many spiritual directors recommend such an exercise as a stimulus to prayer and meditation. When I imagine him appearing to me, I must admit that I don’t usually visualize him walking into my kitchen, opening my refrigerator, and saying, “What have you got here to eat?” But that’s only the deficiency of my own imagination, for Our Lord says almost these exact words when he appears to the apostles.

At one level, this detail of the resurrection narratives tells us how close Jesus was to the apostles, and indeed how close he wants to be to each of us. He wants to be that kind of familiar companion, our friend and brother, so much a part of the family that he can show up at our house, go into the kitchen, and make himself a sandwich.

At another level, this detail tells us something profound about the nature of the Resurrection itself. Our Lord’s risen body definitely has some mysterious properties. He’s able to come and go through closed doors, appearing and disappearing at will. When he first shows up, people sometimes don’t recognize him. Or else, as in today’s Gospel, they think that they’re seeing a ghost. But he’s neither a ghost nor a resuscitated corpse. Instead, he’s entered into a new and wonderful dimension of existence. He hasn’t merely “come back” from the dead; it’s more as though he’s gone through death and come out the other side, more truly and fully alive than he or anyone else has ever been before.

At the same time, his risen body is clearly the same body that was wounded and died on the cross. “And he said to them, ‘Why are you troubled, and why do questionings rise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me, and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have.’” And then he eats the piece of broiled fish almost as if in order to demonstrate the sheer materiality, physicality, corporeality of his risen body.

It’s precisely this encounter that establishes the apostles as witnesses to the Resurrection and qualifies them to preach the Gospel to all nations. “Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.’”

In today’s first reading, from the Acts of the Apostles, we see Peter dramatically beginning to fulfill that very commission as he stands before the people proclaiming the crucified and risen Christ as the Savior of the world.

We observe a certain logical sequence. Seeing, hearing, touching, and indeed eating with the risen Christ make the apostles witnesses to the Resurrection, commissioned to go forth and proclaim the good news to all nations and peoples. The result of that proclamation is, in turn, the gathering of people into fellowship with Christ, the apostles, and one another in Christ’s Body, the Church.

And so we come full circle. For the community into which the proclamation of the Gospel invites us is none other than the Eucharistic fellowship of those who eat and drink together. Again and again, the apostles encounter the risen Christ at moments when they’re gathered to break bread, just as we continue to encounter him Sunday by Sunday in the Sacrament of His Body and Blood.

In the end, then, the important question is not what we would give Jesus to eat if he showed up in our living room and said, “I’m hungry; what have you got here to eat?” – interesting as that question undoubtedly is – but rather, whether we will allow him to feed us and draw us ever closer into the fellowship of those who eat and drink together in his name.

Sermon for Easter Day

Resurrection Mosaic,
St. Nicholas Byzantine Catholic Church, NY.
Photo: Mark J. Teleha; Lorain County Photographer's Blog
http://www.locophotogblog.com/?p=589

The Resurrection of Christ is the heart of the Christian faith. The good news that Christians are called to believe, teach, proclaim, and celebrate is none other than that “Christ is risen.”

This point needs to be made without compromise. Many people today find it difficult to believe in the Resurrection of Jesus. For a number of years, when I was a teenager and young adult, I did not believe it myself. If you find yourself in a place of honest doubt and questioning, then I know where you’re coming from.

But still, regardless of what you or I believe personally, the Church must insist: without the Resurrection, Christian faith becomes something less than Christian faith; Christianity becomes something less than Christianity; Jesus becomes another ancient teacher of spiritual wisdom, whose sayings we can take or leave according to how helpful we find them. But no: Christian faith in the true and full sense of the word presupposes the truth of Christ’s Resurrection. Nothing less will do.

There are two essential elements of the New Testament witness to the Resurrection. First, on Easter morning, the tomb of Jesus was found empty. His body was gone. Second, shortly after this discovery, Jesus started appearing to his followers. He was neither a ghost nor a resuscitated corpse. His hands, feet, and side still bore the wounds of his crucifixion, but rather than having come back from the dead, it was more like he’d passed to a new and glorious state of existence on the other side of death – indeed, he was more fully alive than ever before.

Now, you’re either able to believe that or you aren’t. For my part, I think that faith is a gift that only God can give. If you’re unable to believe in Christ’s Resurrection, but would like to, then the only remedy is to ask God to give you that faith. And if you don’t believe in God but would like to, then your prayer might take something like the form it took for me for some years, “God, I don’t know if you exist, but if you do, then please reveal to me your Truth.”

In any case, I can do nothing standing up here in this pulpit to persuade you of the truth of Christ’s Resurrection by means of empirical proof or logical demonstration. The gift of faith is inherently mysterious; it comes to different people at different times and in different places according to God’s hidden purposes. What I can attempt to do, however, is help prepare the ground for this gift – like a gardener tilling the soil for the seed – by showing the reasonableness, credibility, and plausibility of what the Church believes and teaches.

The late Arthur Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1961 to 1974, addresses this question in a wonderful essay entitled “Preaching Jesus Today.” In presenting Jesus to our contemporaries, he writes, we should start with those facts about him that very few would deny.

First, he proposes, Jesus of Nazareth, a prophet and a teacher, did exist. Second, this same Jesus died by crucifixion. Third – and I quote – “as a result of the career of Jesus of Nazareth there came into history the phenomenon of Christianity, the new movement with its society, its teaching, its rites, its doctrine, its ethics, its impact on the world for better or for worse. This is again indisputable, whatever significance is ascribed to it and in whatever way the causal connection between Jesus and the Church is traced.”

Having established these three historical points, Ramsey proceeds to make some observations about the peculiar character of the Christian movement. “Within this new phenomenon of Christianity,” he writes, “there is a strikingly new valuation of suffering. … The ignominious death by crucifixion … meted out to Jesus is not shame and disgrace: it is ‘good news’, it is of God, it has a victorious character. And for the Christians to suffer is not defeat or tragedy; it has a like victorious character.”

This new valuation of suffering, Ramsey continues, is not a cult of martyrdom or a kind of masochism that values suffering for its own sake. Rather, “it goes with a belief in a divine use of suffering which links it creatively with sacrificial love and with a self-fulfillment within it and beyond it.”

Now, Ramsey asks, what happened to bring such a new valuation about? True, Jesus taught his disciples much about the meaning of his coming suffering and death, but before his death this teaching was lost on them. They didn’t get it. So, something must have happened to create for the disciples the doctrine of Jesus’ death as meaningful and victorious. And this something that happened, Ramsey proposes, was none other than the Resurrection.

The Resurrection, Ramsey argues, transformed the disciples’ valuation of death precisely because it was the Resurrection of the crucified one; the Jesus who came back to his disciples was the same Jesus who had died and who still bore the marks of his sufferings.

“Here then,” Ramsey writes, “is the central point of the history of Jesus. He was not a forgotten crucified teacher. His impact survived, and Christianity came into existence because the Resurrection happened and because it was the Resurrection of the crucified. And … the Death and Resurrection are the events which characterize the nature of Christianity. It is a gospel of life through death, of losing life so as to find it. Thus the Christian’s act of allegiance to the risen Lord Jesus was, and still is, an act of acceptance of the way of the cross.”

The basic thrust of Ramsey’s argument is that the Resurrection of Jesus as reported in the Gospels provides the simplest and most plausible way of accounting for the phenomenon of Christianity in general and for the remarkable and virtually complete transformation of the disciples in particular. The same argument can be made in other ways.

A week ago, on Palm Sunday, I pointed out that the disciples were so afraid at the time of Jesus’ arrest that they forsook him and fled. But then, in the months and years following, their attitudes and behavior underwent a complete reversal. Now, they were speaking out boldly, preaching in the public squares, and bravely facing persecution for doing so. Rather than simply returning to their farms, fishing boats, and trades, many of them undertook dangerous missionary journeys to distant lands where they ended up dying as martyrs for the Gospel they proclaimed. Again, the Resurrection of Jesus is the simplest and best explanation of this wholesale transformation of the disciples’ outlook and worldview.

It follows that the best way of bearing witness to the truth of the Resurrection today is by living lives that testify to the creative power of self-sacrificial love in community. When our life together in this or any other parish visibly embodies the values of death-to-self and service to others, then we begin to show the world not only that Christ is risen but also that he is alive in our midst. And on that basis we invite others to join us and share in this faith, this life, and this love.

Sermon for Good Friday

Henry Thomas Bodset (d. 1934), Jesus before his Crucifixion

During the Trial of Jesus in the Saint John Passion that we’ve just heard, Pontius Pilate declares not once but three times, “I find no fault in him.” (The Authorized Version (AV) says “fault,” but a better translation might be “guilt” or “crime” (RSV), or even “I find no case against him” (NRSV), or “I find no basis for a charge against him” (NIV).)

In John’s narrative, Pilate initially questions Jesus, asking whether he is King of the Jews. Jesus responds that his kingship is not of this world; otherwise his servants would fight, and that his mission is to bear witness to the truth.

Pilate then goes out to the crowd and declares the first time that he finds no crime in Jesus. He offers to release Jesus according to the custom of releasing a prisoner at the time of Passover. But the crowd insists, “No, not this man, but Barabbas.”

Pilate then has Jesus scourged, and the soldiers place on him the crown of thorns and the purple robe. He brings Jesus out before the crowd and declares, “See I am bringing him out to you, that you may know that I find no crime in him.” That’s the second time he says this. But on seeing Jesus, the crowd cries out, “Crucify him, crucify him!”

Pilate responds, “Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no crime in him.” That’s the third time. Pilate wants to find a way to release Jesus, and questions him once more. But when the chief priests implicitly threaten to report Pilate to Caesar, he finally relents and turns Jesus over to be crucified.

In the Jewish law of the time, to declare something three times was to make it irrevocable and binding – like swearing an oath. Some contemporary biblical scholars have argued that John and the other Gospel writers craft their accounts of the trial so as to exonerate the Romans for the death of Jesus and shift the blame to the Jews. But John’s account of Pilate’s actions is fairly damning. Pilate three times declares Jesus innocent, and then hands him over for crucifixion anyway. He thus perverts justice by openly condemning an innocent man to death.

This account of the trial highlights the point that Jesus suffers and dies on the cross as an innocent victim. As a corollary: those who conspire to gather evidence and bring charges against him, and who work to secure his condemnation first by the Sanhedrin and then by Pilate, are not administering justice but rather conspiring to commit a grave injustice. Whatever else the figure of Jesus on the cross represents, then, it depicts first and foremost the unjust suffering of an innocent victim.

The problem of unjust and undeserved suffering remains always with us. For example, when we witness the wholesale slaughter and maiming of civilian men, women, and children in war, our inmost selves cry out to heaven in protest: “Why, O Lord, why?” It’s bad enough that combatants should have to suffer and die in war, and no-one’s suggesting that they deserve it either, but nonetheless something about the unjust suffering of the innocent particularly scandalizes and outrages our consciences.

Down through the centuries, second-rate philosophers and religious teachers have proposed facile solutions to this problem. While we don’t like it at the time, they say, suffering is good for us. It strengthens our character and makes us better people.

But that’s a myth. During the Second World War, the British pacifist Vera Brittain wrote that far from strengthening character and ennobling people, most unjust suffering has precisely the opposite effect. It brutalizes and dehumanizes its victims, creating a legacy of bitterness, resentment, hatred, and thirst for revenge.

The one exception, she wrote – and much more the exception than the rule – is when such suffering is freely accepted by its victim and offered up sacrificially in the service of a higher cause or principle. In that case alone, unjust suffering has the potential to become redemptive and transformative. But very few people have any natural capability for such sacrificial self-offering.

The Gospel that we proclaim today, on Good Friday, is that Jesus Christ, as the Incarnate Son of God, fully human and fully divine, is the one and only innocent victim who ever accepts his unjust suffering and death with such perfect humility and resignation that his offering of himself on the cross constitutes, to quote the Prayer Book, the “one, full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world.”

We don’t need to go into the various theologies describing the mechanisms by which the Atonement is thought to work. The Universal Church has never defined as dogma any of the many competing theories of precisely how and in what way Jesus’ death on the cross accomplishes the forgiveness of sins and the reconciliation of a fallen world to God. It just does, and that’s all we really need to know.

Two consequences follow for us, however, in our calling to live the Christian life. First, in this life at least, following Jesus means walking in the way of the cross. We must never seek suffering for its own sake. But if and when we find ourselves facing some injury, disease, or other calamity that entails pain and loss, we can accept it as a way of being close to Jesus. This acceptance comes to us not naturally but by divine grace, as a gift of the Holy Spirit. So long as we stay close to Jesus, we can bear anything for his sake – and in that case our pain and suffering do have the potential to become redemptive.

Secondly, however, while we may freely accept this path for ourselves, we never have any right to impose it on others. There is something particularly cruel and wicked about telling those in pain to accept their suffering because it will make them better people. And it’s downright blasphemous to inflict pain and suffering on the same pretext, that it’s somehow good for the victims.

No. Down through the centuries the Church’s best wisdom has derived precisely the opposite conclusion from the suffering of Christ on the cross. Our obligation as Christians is to do everything we can to prevent, stop, and relieve the unjust suffering of innocent victims whenever and wherever we encounter it in the world around us. Our mission is one of healing, reconciliation, restoration, and justice.

At this time in our history, in particular, we have an obligation to work to end the systemic injustice that disproportionately victimizes the poor and members of racial and ethnic minorities. The shooting of unarmed black teenagers is but one example. Yet we have the assurance that whenever innocent victims suffer unjustly, Jesus suffers with them. And when we minister to such innocent victims with compassion and love, we minister to Christ himself.

Sermon for Maundy Thursday

Marc Chagall, The Israelites Eating the Passover Lamb, 1931

The events we commemorate on Maundy Thursday, and indeed throughout the coming three days, all take place within the context of the Jewish celebration of Passover in Jerusalem. This evening’s Old Testament reading from Exodus recounts the institution of the Passover meal, known in contemporary Judaism as the Seder. 

According to three of the four canonical Gospels, the Last Supper was a Passover Meal. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus sends his disciples to the upper room to prepare the Passover on the First Day of Unleavened Bread, the day when the Passover lambs are being slaughtered, and that evening after sundown they gather for the meal itself.

The Gospel of John, by contrast, describes the Last Supper as taking place a day earlier, “before the Passover,” with the crucifixion of Jesus happening on the First Day of Passover. John, it seems, wants to emphasize that Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross occur on the same day that the Passover lambs are being slaughtered in the Temple nearby.

Down through the centuries, scholars have debated which of the two accounts is accurate. Either way, the Last Supper takes place when Jesus and his disciples are in Jerusalem to keep the feast. Passover, with all its connotations and associations, is “in the air.” And for all four Gospel writers, the feast of Passover supplies the wider context of meaning illuminating not only the Last Supper but also the unfolding drama of the Lord’s subsequent betrayal, arrest, trial, suffering, and death.

Our reading from Exodus rehearses God’s instructions to the Israelites for keeping the first Passover. Despite a series of nine terrible plagues, Pharaoh has persisted in refusing Moses’ repeated demands to let the people go. About to send the tenth and most terrible plague of all, the death of the firstborn sons throughout the land, God instructs the Israelites that the head of each household must slaughter a lamb and smear some of its blood on the doorposts of the house. The lamb is to be roasted and eaten that night, with nothing left over. Then, when the angel of death goes through the land and sees the blood on the doorposts, he will pass over that house and spare its firstborn.

This last plague finally persuades Pharaoh to relent and let the people go. For the Israelites, then, the Passover lamb becomes a sign of deliverance and salvation. However, the Passover meal is not left as a one-off event. The books of the Old Testament record that the Israelites continued to keep Passover, year by year, as the annual commemoration of their deliverance from bondage in Egypt.

A number of biblical scholars have suggested that this annual celebration of Passover was not merely an occasion of piously recalling events that remained confined to the distant past, but rather a means of dynamically re-appropriating and re-experiencing those events in the present. Subsequent generations of Jews did not live through the Exodus from Egypt, but, in a way that is difficult for the modern western mind to understand, by re-enacting those events liturgically they became one with their ancestors who did, and so were reconstituted as God’s people Israel. This mysterious quality of the Passover commemoration is conveyed in the opening words of the Seder, spoken by the youngest child present: “Why is this night different from all other nights?” The child represents, of course, the future generations who are to be incorporated into the people of Israel by liturgical participation in the long-ago events of the Exodus.

The Greek word for this sort of transformation of time is anamnesis, the making-present of past events, which translates rather lamely into English as “remembrance.” And Saint Paul uses precisely this same word in rendering the words of Jesus at the Last Supper over the bread and the wine: “Do this in remembrance of me.” In Greek: do this for my anamnesis. A better translation might be: Do this to make me present among you; Do this to recall me into your midst.

Earlier in the same letter, Paul explicitly likens Jesus to the Passover lamb in words that we repeat at the Breaking of the Bread at almost every Eucharist: “Christ, our Paschal lamb has been sacrificed. Let us, therefore, celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” (Paul’s reference there to “unleavened bread” similarly refers to the matzo bread used in the Passover meal.)

At the Last Supper, Jesus transforms powerful religious symbols inherited from the past. Up until now, the Passover lamb has functioned as a sign of God’s deliverance of his people from slavery. But now Jesus himself becomes the new Passover Lamb, the sacrificial victim whose death delivers his people from the power of sin and death for all time and beyond. More than that, Jesus fulfills the symbolism by showing himself to be the true Passover Lamb, the ultimate sacrificial offering towards which the Passover Meal was always pointing.

During the course of the meal, Jesus invests the familiar elements of bread and wine with new meaning: This is my body; this is my blood. In the context of the Last Supper, these mysterious words have a double significance. First, they predict what’s going to happen the next day. Jesus will die on the cross and his blood will be poured out. Obscure as these words are when he speaks them, his disciples will afterwards be able to remember and understand: Yes, what was it that he said at the supper about his body and his blood? His words not only predict but also interpret his coming death. It is not an ignominious and ultimately meaningless defeat, but rather the inauguration of a new covenant in his blood.

Second, his words set the pattern that his disciples are to follow henceforth until the end of time: “As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup,” writes Paul, “you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” From now on, the life of the Church will be defined by this pattern: meeting together weekly and even daily to break the bread and share the cup, and so partake of the Body and Blood of Christ.

On Maundy Thursday, then, we give thanks for our Lord’s gift of himself to us in the Holy Eucharist. We remember with gratitude the Eucharist’s origins in the Passover meal, which Jesus celebrated faithfully throughout his life. We pray for the Jewish people, our “elder brothers and sisters in faith” as Pope John Paul II called them, who will be celebrating the Passover Seder at this time tomorrow evening. And we rejoice that Jesus is our Passover lamb, who feeds us with his own Body and Blood every time we gather to break the bread and share the cup.

Sermon for Palm Sunday, Year B

Pavel Popov, Judas Betrays Christ with a Kiss (Date Unknown)

Mark 11:1-11

Mark 14:1-15:47

In Episcopal parish churches where they don’t have a choir to sing the Passion Gospel on Palm Sunday, it’s common to have a dramatic reading of it instead. Members of the congregation are assigned different parts, from the narrator, to Peter, to the maid who accuses Peter of being one of Jesus’ disciples, to the centurion at the foot of the cross.

The parish priest almost always takes the part of Jesus. The full congregation takes the part of the crowd, shouting out with particular enthusiasm the lines, “Crucify, crucify him!” (Sometimes one wonders whether they’re referring more to Jesus or the rector.)

Countless sermons and devotional commentaries on this practice point out the contrast between the crowd’s cries of “Hosanna” when Jesus enters Jerusalem, and the same crowd’s cries of “Crucify, crucify him!” within the same week. By reciting these lines, the congregation is reminded that even if we join in singing the praises of Jesus in church, we need to take care that we don’t end up effectively calling for his crucifixion at other times in other contexts.

This year, both the Palm Gospel and the Passion Gospel are taken from Saint Mark. Some biblical scholars reckon Mark’s the first of the canonical Gospels to have been written, while others question that hypothesis. Either way, Mark’s Gospel is clearly the shortest and most succinct of the four.

I want to argue this morning that a careful reading of Saint Mark shows that the real contrast he has in mind is not so much between the cries of “Hosanna” on Palm Sunday and “Crucify him!” on Good Friday, as between the disciples’ enthusiastically following Jesus into Jerusalem at his Triumphal Entry but then deserting him at his arrest a few days later.

Let’s look at both events a bit more closely. On Palm Sunday, Jesus makes his final approach to Jerusalem among the crowds of pilgrims going up to the Holy City to keep Passover. His route by way of the villages of Bethany and Bethphage on the Mount of Olives has deep significance. According to Old Testament prophecy, this is where the Messiah will appear on the Day of the Lord: “On that day,” says the prophet Zechariah, “his feet shall stand upon the Mount of Olives which lies before Jerusalem to the east.”

The elaborate preparations involving the colt evoke another prophecy of Zechariah:

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on an ass,
on a colt the foal of an ass.

Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a young donkey is thus what the biblical scholars call an enacted sign: a bit of street theater designed to make a theological and political point. He’s visually proclaiming himself the true king of Israel, the Messiah or Anointed One of God, arriving to take possession of his capital city.

The point is not lost on those accompanying him. Spreading their garments and leafy branches in his path, they pay him the homage due royalty and acclaim him the one who comes in the name of the Lord to restore the kingdom of his father David.

Those who engage in this acclamation are not, however, the multitudes at large. Rather, they’re those who’ve traveled with Jesus from Galilee, along the Jordan valley, through Jericho, and up to Jerusalem. The Twelve Apostles are the inner circle of Jesus’ disciples, but the disciples are really a much larger group. They’ve followed him, listened to his teachings, and witnessed his miracles – most recently the healing of blind Bartimaeus on the road out of Jericho. These disciples traveling with Jesus and the Apostles are the ones who acclaim him as Messiah as they enter Jerusalem.

Within the week, however, their hopes for the establishment of the messianic kingdom are dashed. After eating the Passover meal with the Twelve, Jesus goes out to a place called Gethsemene with Peter, James, and John, and spends much of the night in prayer. Identified by his betrayer Judas with a kiss, he is seized by an armed mob sent by the chief priests and scribes and elders. Then, as Mark notes with characteristic brevity, his disciples all forsake him and flee.

There follows that strange incident, found only in Mark’s Gospel, of the young man who follows him wearing only a linen garment. The mob seizes him but he leaves the linen cloth and runs away naked. Biblical commentators down through the centuries have speculated on his identity. Some have wondered if he’s Mark himself. Most likely, however, Mark’s point in relating the incident has to do with the shame of nakedness in that culture. Rather than allowing himself to be seized so that he can continue to follow Jesus in the Way of the Cross, the young man chooses instead the shame of running away naked. In this way, Mark highlights the shame of all those who abandon Jesus and flee in the moment of crisis.

Peter subsequently experiences the shame of forsaking Jesus when he denies him three times in the high priest’s courtyard when accused of being one of his disciples. Remembering the Lord’s prediction, “Before the cock crows twice, you shall deny me three times,” Peter breaks down and weeps bitterly.

In the end, Jesus faces his trials, his scourging, his mocking, his carrying of the cross, and his death by crucifixion alone, abandoned and forsaken by the same disciples who followed him into Jerusalem singing hosannas just a few days before. The sole exceptions in Mark’s account are the women who came up with him to Jerusalem. As Jesus dies on the cross, they stand watching from afar.

New Testament scholars suggest that Mark may have been writing specifically to encourage Christians in his own day to remain loyal and faithful to Jesus under the threat of persecution and martyrdom. Unlike the disciples who fled, the Christians of Mark’s generation had received the Holy Spirit, first poured out upon the Church at Pentecost, and subsequently conveyed in the Church’s Sacraments. One of the Spirit’s gifts is fortitude, the ability to stand fast and confess Jesus as Lord even at the cost of one’s own life. The martyrs of the early Church exhibited such fortitude in spades.

This gift of remaining faithful unto death was most recently displayed by the twenty-one Coptic Christians beheaded by the Islamic State on a beach in Libya; to a man they died saying prayers, with the name of Jesus on their lips. They did not forsake Jesus, and Jesus will not forsake them.

Mark’s challenge to us, then, is not to forsake Jesus as his disciples did on the night of his arrest. We’re called to remain faithful in simple ways: most of all by keeping on coming to Mass and participating in the life of the Church – both when it feels good and when it seems difficult, inconvenient, and the last thing we feel like doing. For if we continue faithful to Jesus, in season and out of season, we have the assurance he will continue faithful to us.

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year B

April 22, 2015

Jeremiah 31:31-34

If you’ve been paying attention to the readings and the sermons this Lent, you’ll have noticed that the theme of Covenant has pervaded the past five Sundays. We’ve seen that biblical covenants are mutual agreements between God and his people, usually commemorated by some sort of sign or marker.

On the First Sunday in Lent, the Old Testament reading introduced God’s Covenant with Noah and all his descendants, that is, the entire human race, in which God promised never again to destroy the earth with water. The sign of that covenant was the rainbow.

On the Second Sunday in Lent, we considered God’s Covenant with Abraham and his descendants, whom God promised to make as numerous as the stars in the sky, and to whom he promised the land of Canaan. The sign of that covenant was circumcision.

On the Third Sunday in Lent, we looked at God’s Covenant with Moses and the Israelites, given on Mount Sinai. The sign of that covenant was the two stone tablets bearing the Ten Commandments.

Then last week, on the Fourth Sunday in Lent, the focus changed a bit. The Old Testament reading from Numbers introduced the problem of the people’s disobedience and rebellion in the wilderness. Although they’d promised to obey God’s laws and walk in his ways, they nonetheless grumbled and complained against Moses, so that God sent fiery serpents, which bit them so that many died.

Then, when Moses interceded with God for the people, the remedy was a bronze serpent mounted on a pole; upon which those bitten by the fiery serpents could then look and live. We noted also that, beginning with Chapter 3 of John’s Gospel, the Christian tradition has understood the bronze serpent as an anticipation or type of the cross of Christ, upon which sinners may look and be saved.

The wider point is that there’s a big difference between promising obedience and actually being obedient. Throughout, the Old Testament records that again and again the people of Israel broke their promises to God, and relapsed into idolatry and wickedness.

From the Christian viewpoint, the Old Testament has a certain quality of incompleteness. It clearly reveals God’s holiness, goodness, and mercy; and it tells the stories of many very good and even heroic individuals. But the overall picture it paints of the human response to God is one of infidelity and rebellion. The Old Testament masterfully points out the problem of the human condition, namely sin, but it doesn’t quite give the solution. Last week’s Old Testament reading pointed towards the solution, in the form of the cross, by which God forgives our sins. But even then, forgiveness by itself isn’t quite enough. Something more is needed.

One way of describing the problem is that deep down within ourselves we often experience a conflict between what we know to be right in our minds and what we desire with our hearts and choose with our wills. Faced with this conflict, we can go in one of two directions.

First, we can simply rebel. In today’s world, this rebellion most often expresses itself in the attempt to rewrite God’s laws and redefine wrong as right and right as wrong. Now it’s true that a good deal of re-thinking of traditional morality is taking place in today’s Church. That process is, however, a matter for corporate discernment rather than private judgment. Over time, the Church may or may not reach a new consensus on what counts as right and wrong on any given issue. In the meantime, however, we’re called to remain obedient to the laws, commandments, and precepts that we’ve received. But the sad fact is that our unruly wills and disordered affections all too easily lead us astray.

Second, we can make a strenuous effort to obey God’s laws even though deep down what we really want is precisely what the law forbids. Without the inner renewal of our hearts, this effort leads to legalism: a rigid insistence on keeping the letter of the law that breeds nasty intolerance and hypocrisy.

So, we find ourselves caught on the horns of a dilemma: between rebellion on one hand, and legalism and hypocrisy on the other. We have the assurance that Christ’s sacrifice on the cross obtains the forgiveness of our sins, but still, something more is needed: namely, a thoroughgoing renewal of our inner selves so that what we know in our minds to be right also becomes what we desire most in our hearts.

None of the covenants of the Old Testament were able to accomplish this inner renewal – at least not completely or permanently. Yet in today’s reading from the prophet Jeremiah, God announces a new Covenant: “I will put my law within them, and write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

As Christians, we believe that this new Covenant is none other than that mediated by Jesus Christ. In his Incarnation he lived the perfect human life, overcoming all opposition between law and desire, letter and spirit, outward constraint and inward motivation. By his death upon the cross, he obtained the forgiveness of our sins. By his Resurrection, he overcame the power of sin and death. And by the sending of the Holy Spirit, he incorporates us into his risen life so that the New Covenant prophesied by Jeremiah becomes a living reality in our midst.

The promise of the New Covenant is that by putting our faith in Jesus Christ, and inviting the Holy Spirit to take charge of our lives, we open the door for God to begin working on us and changing us from the inside. Little by little he will reform us and renew us, writing his law not only in our minds but in our hearts and wills as well.

The well-known preacher Fleming Rutledge writes this:

“When God’s law is written on our hearts by the Holy Spirit, we discover that God’s will and our will are one and the same. Not only will we not want to be … angry with our brother … we won’t nurse anger, and we won’t even notice that we don’t do it. That’s freedom! Our wills have blended into God’s will.

“Impossible you say. Precisely. It’s as impossible as unlocking the door from the inside with no key. It has to be done by divine intervention. Something has to work on us from beyond ourselves. That is exactly what God announced through Jeremiah in his new covenant. ‘With men it is impossible but not with God,’ said Jesus, ‘for all things are possible with God.’”

Beginning next Sunday, we shall commemorate the mysteries of our Lord’s suffering, death, and resurrection: the saving actions by which God establishes his New Covenant with us and with all creation. Rather than just piously remembering these events as having happened in the distant past, we do well to seek to enter into them and experience their power in the present. We pray that God will make his new Covenant a living reality in our lives, and that he shall write his law in our hearts.

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year B

Michelangelo, The Brazen Serpent, Sistine Chapel Ceiling, 1508-1512

Sunday 15 March 2015

Numbers 21:4-9

John 3:14-21

One of the recurring images of the Lenten Season is that of the Israelites’ forty years in the wilderness after the Exodus from Egypt. Both the Old and New Testaments repeatedly cite this period as a time of testing – during which the Israelites were often tried and found wanting. Instead of trusting the God who’d sent Moses to lead them, they frequently grumbled and complained, finding fault with Moses and accusing him of having led them out into the desert to die of thirst and starvation.

Three weeks ago on the First Sunday of Lent, the Gospel presented Jesus as effectively reversing Israel’s disobedience by successfully resisting the devil’s temptations during his forty days in the wilderness. And so, Christian Lenten devotion down through the centuries has urged us to avoid the negative example of Israel’s rebellion and to embrace instead the positive example of our Lord’s faithfulness and steadfastness.

Today’s Old Testament reading from the Book of Numbers continues this theme of Israel’s disobedience in the wilderness. This episode occurs near the end of the forty years of wandering, when the Israelites are about to make their final approach to the Promised land from the lands to the east of the River Jordan. Their route takes them out of the Sinai Peninsula by way of the northeastern tip of the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aqaba. For much of their forty years in the Sinai they have camped near oases where food and water have been at least available even if not plentiful. But now, again traversing an arid desert landscape, they begin to grumble and complain once more.

In the past, these incidents have come to fall into a standard pattern. First, the people find fault with Moses and accuse him of having led them into the desert to die. Second, in desperation and fear for his life, Moses prays to the Lord. And third, in response to Moses’ intercession, God provides a miraculous deliverance in some such form as manna from heaven, or water from the rock, and the people cease complaining.

This time, however, events take a slightly different turn. In response to the people’s grumbling and complaining, God sends a plague of fiery serpents, which bite the people so that many of them die. But the Israelites have actually learned something during their forty years in the wilderness, for now they recognize without being told that they’ve sinned and that the snakes are their punishment. And again, they’ve learned that the right course of action in such circumstances is to entreat Moses to pray to God for them.

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

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

We see certain parallels between the two stories. In the wilderness, the Israelites are disobedient to God and so suffer death by fiery serpents, just as in the beginning Adam and Eve are tempted by the serpent to disobey God and so become subject to sin and death. In a sense, then, the grumbling of the Israelites in the wilderness symbolizes all human sin in all times and places, while the fiery serpents symbolize the poisonous consequences of that sin.

Why, then, should healing come by means of the visual image of a bronze serpent on a pole? The Greek Orthodox theologian Andreas Andreopoulos suggests that in order to be healed, the Israelites must face up to the reality of their sin and its consequences. The bronze serpent visually symbolizes their transgression, so they can look upon it, acknowledge their sin, and come to repentance. Only in this way can they find healing, forgiveness, and salvation.

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

The healing of the snake-bitten Israelites by means of a bronze serpent on a pole foreshadows the healing of our fallen humanity by means of the cross of Christ. There is no more powerful symbol of the horror of human sin than the cross. When the Son of God came into the world, this is what we did to him. Yet, paradoxically, for this very reason the cross becomes the remedy for sin. Looking at the cross, we come face to face with the consequences of our rebellion against God. And in this way God gives us the opportunity to repent and return to him.

As we continue our journey through Lent towards Holy Week and Good Friday, we pause today to acknowledge that we’re often more like the disobedient Israelites in the wilderness than we care to admit. We have sinned; and the consequences of our sin are always with us, like nasty little vipers nipping at our ankles. Yet just as God gave the Israelites a remedy for snakebite in the form of a bronze snake on a pole, so he gives us a remedy for our sin in form of a cross. And when we look upon him who was lifted upon that cross for our sakes, we receive the assurance of eternal life.

Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent, Year B

March 8, 2015

The Ten Commandments

During Lent in Year B of the three-year lectionary cycle, the Old Testament readings at Sunday Mass focus attention on the theme of Covenant. To review what I said two weeks ago: in the ancient Near East, a covenant was a well-known form of agreement or treaty between two parties usually but not always of unequal power and status: a superior and an inferior, such as a powerful king and a vassal.

In a typical covenant, the superior party promised some benefit, such as military protection and good government, to the inferior party, in return for the inferior party’s pledge of obedience, loyalty, and tribute. Very often, also, the parties to such a covenant erected some sort of monument to stand as a perpetual sign and reminder of the agreement they’d made.

A basic principle of biblical theology is that in revealing himself to his people in a particular time at a particular place, God accommodates himself to their dominant images, symbols, and categories of thought, to make himself understandable in the context of their society and culture. So, it’s not surprising that the Old Testament depicts the relationship between God and his people as unfolding through a series of covenants. In each covenant, God makes a promise, usually makes some demand in return, and usually gives some sign to stand as a reminder of the covenant.

Two weeks ago, the Old Testament reading reminded us of God’s covenant with Noah, in which God promised never again to destroy the earth by water. The sign of that covenant was the rainbow.

Last week, the reading reminded us of God’s covenant with Abraham, in which God promised to make Abraham the ancestor of a great nation in whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed. The sign of that covenant was circumcision.

Today, we come to the third of the great covenants of the Old Testament, God’s Covenant with Moses on Mount Sinai. In this covenant God promises the twelve tribes of Israel that they will enter and take possession of the Promised Land, and that he will be their God and they will be his People, if they keep his laws and commandments. The sign of this covenant is the two stone Tables of the Law that Moses brings down from the mountain. And inscribed on these two Tables are the Ten Commandments.

Jews and Christians alike revere the Ten Commandments as the definitive summary of God’s moral law. Even though the Church early on set aside many of the ritual and ceremonial precepts of the Torah as no longer binding upon Christians, we’ve nonetheless always recognized the Ten Commandments as a digest of moral principles that remain valid for all people in all times and places. G.K. Chesterton once said that you can’t break the Ten Commandments; you can only break yourself against them.

The Ten Commandments are best understood in the context of the story of how they’re given. Moses leads the Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt with great signs and wonders. At the Red Sea, they’re miraculously delivered from death at the hands of the Egyptians when God parts the waters to let them cross over on dry land. They enter the wilderness and come to the foot of Mount Sinai. The mountain is covered by clouds of thick darkness and flashes of fire. Alone, Moses ascends the mountain, to receive God’s law.

The first commandment refers explicitly to this preceding sequence of events: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods but me.” Here God is saying, in effect, “Now that I’ve done all this for you; here’s what I expect of you in return.”

The purpose of the Covenant is to call the people into relationship with the Lord who has delivered them from slavery. Henceforth, their motive in obeying the Commandments will be to express their gratitude and loyalty to the God who has chosen them as a people for His own possession.

The Christian Church has traditionally interpreted the Ten Commandments in light of our Lord’s Summary of the Law in Matthew 22:37-40: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

The classical Christian tradition sees the first four commandments as teaching what it means to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind: You shall have no other Gods before me, you shall not make any idol, you shall not take the Lord’s name in vain, remember to keep holy the Sabbath Day. The remaining six commandments teach what it means to love our neighbors as ourselves: Honor your father and your mother, you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, you shall not covet.

The Ten Commandments are worthy of memorization, study, and reflection. We Anglicans have traditionally used them as an outline for examining our consciences and repenting of our sins before we come to Holy Communion, which is why they’re printed in the Prayer Book at the very beginning of the Eucharistic Liturgy.

But it’s crucial to remember that we cannot save ourselves by keeping these laws. Notice that God gives the Commandments to the Israelites after He’s saved them from the Egyptians, not before. Similarly, for us, salvation comes to us first, apart from works of the law. If we try to fulfill God’s commandments by our own efforts, we quickly discover how far short we fall of the mark, and how much we need God’s forgiveness and grace.

Instead, God offers us eternal salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ; and we receive that salvation in faith. Then, and only then, do the Commandments come into play as a means of teaching us a way of life appropriate to our identity as a redeemed people, a way of life by which we express our gratitude and loyalty to God for all that he’s already done for us.

During this Season of Lent, then, the Church calls us to renew our commitment to keeping God’s Law. But we do so never as a means of earning God’s favor – as if that were possible – but always as an expression of love for God, who in Christ Jesus has loved us first.

Sermon for First Sunday in Lent, Year B

Noah's Ark, English circa. 1100

Genesis 9:8-17

I Peter 3:18-22

Mark 1:9-15

Sunday 22 February 2015

This year, the Old Testament readings for four of the five Sundays of Lent have the common theme of covenants between God and his people. In church circles, we tend to toss around the word “covenant” quite freely. We talk about the Old Covenant, the New Covenant, the Marriage Covenant, and the Baptismal Covenant. But I’m not sure that we’re always clear on what “covenant” actually means. So, it may be helpful to look at the biblical meaning of the word.

In the ancient world, a covenant was an agreement or treaty between two parties. Today, we’re more familiar with the idea of a contract. In a contract, two parties sign an agreement attested by witnesses and enforceable by law. If either party breaks the contract, the injured party has recourse to the courts to have the terms of the contract enforced by a judge.

In the ancient world, however, a covenant was an agreement made between two parties in the absence of any judge or court to enforce its terms. Both parties would make solemn promises concerning their future behavior. Two kings, for example, might make a covenant to live at peace with each other, to respect each other’s trade routes, and to come to each other’s aid if attacked. More often, though, a covenant was not between equals, but rather between unequals, such as a lord and a vassal. In this case, the superior party typically promised to protect and care for the inferior party, and in return the inferior party typically promised loyalty and obedience to the superior party.

To ratify the covenant, the parties would participate in a solemn ceremony that might include an animal sacrifice or a ritual meal, invoking blessings on themselves if they kept the covenant, and curses if they broke it. Finally, they might erect some sort of public monument or sign – perhaps an engraved obelisk, plaque, or stone marker – to stand as a perpetual reminder of the covenant they had made.

Throughout the Bible, God reveals himself and discloses his purposes by means of ideas and concepts that people already know from the world of their everyday experience. In other words, God accommodates himself to the limits of our human understanding by speaking our language. And since covenant agreements were so familiar in the ancient world, it’s not surprising that God made use of them to initiate and establish relationships with his people. In the Old Testament, God makes at least four covenants: with Noah, with Abraham, with Moses, and with David. In each case, the covenant spells out a promise on God’s part, and sometimes also stipulates corresponding obligations on the people’s part.

This background is crucial for understanding the story of Noah. The Book of Genesis tells us that after God creates the world, the wickedness of the human race multiplies, from the original disobedience of Adam and Eve in the Garden; through the murder of Abel by Cain; to the blasphemous attempt to build a tower that reaches to heaven, the Tower of Babel. God regrets having created human beings, and so resolves to put an end to their wickedness by means of a great flood that will inundate the whole earth.

Amidst the whole wicked human race, God sees one righteous man, Noah; so God tells Noah to build a ship, the Ark, and to take into the Ark both his family and a male and female specimen of every animal upon the earth. So, Noah and his three sons and their wives – eight persons in all – enter the Ark. Then God opens the floodgates of the Great Deep, and it rains for forty days and forty nights. All living creatures on the earth are destroyed, except Noah, his family, and all the animals on the Ark. At length, the waters recede, the dry land re-appears; and Noah, his family, and all the animals go forth from the Ark to re-inhabit and repopulate a new creation.

God then makes a covenant with Noah promising never again to destroy the earth by water. This covenant is truly universal in scope; God makes it not with any particular race or nation but with all generations that shall come after Noah: and not only with all the people of the earth, but with every living creature as well. And the sign of this covenant is the rainbow that God puts in the clouds as a perpetual reminder of his promise.

The story of Noah makes the point, on one hand, that a holy and righteous God cannot abide human sin and wickedness. When people do evil, they bring God’s judgment upon themselves. But, on the other hand, God’s judgment always contains within itself a deeper purpose of redemption and salvation. So, in the Flood story, we see God executing judgment on a sinful and disobedient world and yet, at the same time, through Noah and the Ark, making possible that same world’s re-creation and renewal. 

In other words, God’s final purpose is never to annihilate and destroy but always to redeem and save, to start over and make new. Our God is above all a God of second chances and fresh starts.

We need to remember this truth at those times of crisis in our lives – times for example of illness, death, bereavement, conflict, or separation – when it seems that the flood is raging around us and our world is coming to an end. Even in the moments of greatest darkness, God is still present and at work to realize his purposes of redemption and salvation in ways that we can’t yet see and don’t yet understand.

This biblical pattern – of judgment carrying within itself the seeds of redemption – finds its ultimate expression and fulfillment on the cross. To all outward appearances, the death by crucifixion of Jesus represents unmitigated disaster and total defeat, and yet it bears within itself the seeds of cosmic victory and eternal life.

We begin to share in that life through Holy Baptism, which in today’s Epistle reading Saint Peter likens to the Flood. The analogy is that just as the Deluge drowned a sinful world while the Ark saved Noah and brought the members of his household to a creation made new, so the waters of Baptism drown out our old sinful natures and bring us to the new creation begun in Jesus Christ. The only reason we keep on sinning is that we’ve not yet fully lived into the reality of what God has already done for us in Baptism.

Even though our sins have merited God’s judgment, then, our Baptism holds out God’s promise and pledge of salvation. So, perhaps the best way to begin our Lenten pilgrimage is simply by renewing our trust in God’s promises. For the story of Noah reminds us that God’s desire above all else is to redeem and save his creation, which he loves.

Sermon for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B

Isaac Williams, 1802-1865

II Kings 2:1-12
Mark 9:2-9

In 1837, Isaac Williams, a priest of the Church of England and one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement, published Tract Number Eighty of Tracts for the Times. The Tract was titled, “On Reserve in Communicating Religious Knowledge.” It caused quite a storm of controversy at the time, and established what became known as “the principle of reserve” as a key tenet of Anglo-Catholic teaching.

Briefly, the principle of reserve suggests that some mysteries of the Christian faith are so sublime and holy that they are best not talked about too openly, too publicly, or too casually, in settings where they’re apt to be not only rejected but also blasphemously ridiculed and reviled. Instead, such teachings are best left unmentioned except in hushed tones of reverence and respect.

Over and against the Evangelicals of the era, who had taken to preaching Christ’s Death, Resurrection, and Second Coming on street corners and in open-air marketplaces – often before hostile crowds who responded with catcalls and even projectiles – Williams advocated a restrained and graduated approach. Preachers, teachers, and catechists should progressively reveal the deepest and most sublime truths of the faith to potential converts only as they were ready to receive them.

Williams buttressed his argument with numerous illustrations from Scripture. It’s always seemed to me that today’s Gospel contains an archetypal example of the principle of reserve where it records that after the Transfiguration, as they were coming down the mountain, Jesus charged the disciples Peter, James, and John to tell no-one what they had seen, until the Son of Man should have risen from the dead.

Today’s readings are shot through with mystery. The Old Testament story of the assumption of the prophet Elijah, from the Second Book of the Kings, sets the stage for the Gospel. Since Elijah did not die but was taken up into heaven, he remains alive with God and thus appears on the holy mountain with Moses and Jesus in the light of divine glory.

The death of Moses, as well, is an event shrouded in mystery. The Book of Deuteronomy records that at the end of the Hebrews’ forty years of wandering in the Wilderness, Moses ascended Mount Nebo, in full view of the Promised Land, and there died. The Lord himself buried Moses, the narrative continues, and no one knows the place of his burial. By New Testament times, however, the tradition had grown up that Moses had not died but had been taken up into heaven – a view propounded in such apocryphal works as the Assumption of Moses.

Moreover, the tradition had also developed that the return of either Elijah or Moses or both would signal the arrival of the Messianic age. So the prophets of Israel had foretold. The Book of Malachi included the prophecy, “Behold, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes.” And before he died, Moses himself had told the Israelites, “The Lord your God will raise up a prophet like me from among you, from among your brethren – him you shall heed.”

So, when Peter, James, and John witness the spectacle of Jesus transfigured with the brightness of divine glory, and Moses and Elijah with him, the message is clear. Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One of God. He is the One destined to bring about the reign of God on earth. So the voice from heaven confirms: “This is my beloved Son; listen to him.”

Most likely, as Peter, James, and John are coming down off the mountain they want nothing more than to proclaim what they have seen and heard: to the rest of the Twelve, to all the disciples, and to the multitudes far and wide. But then, to their surprise, Jesus enjoins silence. “He charged them to tell no one what they had seen, until the Son of Man should have risen from the dead.”

Why this divine gag order? The most likely reason is that while Peter, James, and John have seen a vision of overwhelming power and significance, they are not yet properly equipped to interpret the vision’s meaning.

The Transfiguration comes seven days after Peter has confessed Jesus to be the Messiah. Yet when Jesus immediately thereafter began to teach that he must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, Peter began to rebuke him, drawing in turn the Lord’s rebuke, “Get behind me Satan, for you are not on the side of God but of men.”

Again, shortly after the Transfiguration, Mark records that Jesus was traveling through Galilee teaching his disciples that “the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him; and when he is killed, after three days he will rise.” But, says Mark, “they did not understand the saying, and they were afraid to ask him”

A bit later, as they are on the road going up to Jerusalem, Jesus predicts his death and resurrection a third time, and in more detail than before: “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and deliver him to the Gentiles; and they will mock him, and scourge him, and spit upon him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise.” But the disciples still don’t get it; and the depth of their incomprehension is evident in the request of James and John to sit one at his right and one at his left in his glory.

James and John, remember, were both present at the Transfiguration. For the moment, all they can see is the promise of divine glory of which they have received an anticipatory glimpse. Despite the Lord’s repeated warnings and admonitions, they still don’t grasp that before they can share in the glory of God’s Kingdom, they must first follow Jesus in the Way of the Cross. That is why the Lord charged them as they were coming down the mountain to say nothing of what they had seen until the Son of Man should have risen from the dead. Apart from the cross, the story of who Jesus is cannot be fully told. In this case, the principle of reserve means refraining of speaking of things not only that the hearers are not yet ready to hear, but also that the teachers are not yet ready to teach.

The assumption of Elijah in today’s Old Testament reading anticipates the ultimate ascension and glorification of Jesus, towards which the Transfiguration in today’s Gospel likewise points forward. For the disciples, as for us, the Transfiguration is a glimpse of a promised future but not yet the possession of that future. So, after today’s celebration, on Wednesday we begin the observance of Lent, by which the Church annually reminds us that before we can enter into the glory of Christ’s Kingdom, we must first climb with him another mountain, that of Golgotha.

Sermon for the 2nd Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B

January 18, 2015 (at the 8 o'clock Mass)

I Samuel 3:1-20

John 1:43-51

Cambridge, England: Gonville and Caius College: chapel apse mosaic
(prophet Samuel being tutored by Eli)
(1870, made by firm of Antonio Salviati)

The Gospel readings for this season after the Epiphany emphasize the manifestation or showing forth of Christ. At Christmas we celebrate the Son of God coming down from heaven and sharing in our human life. But, momentous as that was, it was not enough to suffice for our salvation. His divine identity also had to be revealed and made known to us. Otherwise, we would never have known who he was or what he had come to offer us.

Revelation is a process that takes place in two stages. First, God must speak. But, second, we must hear his voice and recognize who it is that’s speaking. Today’s readings tell the stories of two people who come to recognize the Lord speaking to them: Samuel in the Old Testament; and Nathanael in the Gospel.

In the Old Testament reading, the boy Samuel is serving in the temple at Shiloh. Religion in that period seems to have reached a low ebb and become dry and formalistic: “the Word of the Lord was rare in those days; there was no frequent vision.” So, when Samuel hears a voice calling him, it doesn’t occur to him that it might be the Lord, and he thinks that it’s his master Eli instead.

Similarly, in the Gospel reading, when Philip goes to tell his friend Nathanael that they’ve found the Messiah – and it’s Jesus of Nazareth – Nathanael’s reaction is one of incredulity and disbelief: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” In both cases, the serious danger is that although the Lord is speaking, the message will be missed: by Samuel on account of his mistaking the voice for something else; and by Nathanael on account of his prejudice that no-one from Nazareth could possibly be the Messiah.

Notice, however, that in both cases someone else helps bring the person to the point of recognition. Samuel goes three times to Eli, saying, “Here I am, for you called me.” When Eli finally catches on as to what’s really happening, he instructs the boy: “The next time he calls, you shall say, ‘Speak Lord, for thy servant hears.’” Without Eli’s help, Samuel might simply shut the voice out and go through life never realizing his vocation to be a great prophet.

Likewise, Nathanael most likely would never come to know Jesus without the help of his friend Philip. For it’s Philip who first bothers to tell him, “We’ve found the Messiah,” and then, when Nathanael expresses disbelief that anything good could come out of Nazareth, it’s Philip who says simply, “Come, and see.” (That, by the way, is excellent evangelistic strategy. Philip doesn’t try to argue or persuade. He simply invites. Come and see.)

In both cases, the actual life-changing encounter with the divine is direct, one-on-one. Samuel must hear for himself what the Lord will say; Eli can’t do that for him. And Nathanael must meet Jesus for himself and come to his own realization that this is the Son of God, the King of Israel. Nonetheless, neither Samuel nor Nathanael comes to that point alone or unaided. Both Eli and Philip play pivotal roles in making the encounter possible. Reflecting on our own lives, we may be able to recall the role that such individuals have played in helping us come to faith and recognize the Lord’s voice calling us.

When I was a graduate student in Washington DC, my friend Susan played such a role for me. One Saturday evening, she and I were out having a drink in one of the bars on Connecticut Avenue; and I asked her if she would like to join a group of my friends for a game of volleyball on Sunday morning. She replied, “No, I can’t. I’m going to church.” So, I started asking her about the church she attended, and she invited me to come with her.

At that point, I was an agnostic who didn’t believe anything much, and I hadn’t darkened the door of a church in years. But for some reason I found myself saying yes; and the next morning I was attending the Sunday liturgy at Saint Margaret’s Episcopal Church, also on Connecticut Avenue. And that was the beginning of my conversion to Christianity. In a sense, then, Susan was Philip to my Nathanael. She issued the initial invitation, Come and see, and our Lord did the rest.

A couple of years later, I found my brain invaded by crazy thoughts about becoming a priest. Initially, I thought that this was the most ridiculous idea that had ever occurred to me. But the more I tried to push these thoughts out of my mind, the more they came back and reasserted themselves with a vengeance.

Finally, I went to my parish priest in the hope that he would disabuse me of any thoughts of ordination and tell me to do something else with my life since obviously I was so totally unsuited to the priesthood. Instead, he just smiled and said, “I’ve been wondering when you would come to talk about this.” In a sense, then, he was Eli to my Samuel. In so many words, he told me not to ignore the call I was hearing but rather to pay attention and listen.

The point is that the Christian life is not a solo endeavor. Relationships in the Body of Christ are crucially important. We all need others to be Eli and Philip to us, strengthening our faith and helping us discern all the different ways in which God is speaking to us. Then, having received this gift, we in turn need to make ourselves available to be Eli and Philip to others. And we need to keep on building a parish community that nurtures and fosters these relationships of spiritual friendship: a community in which we all help each other to know the Lord and to hear his voice.

Sermon for the Confession of Saint Peter

Sunday 18 January 2015 (at the 10 o'clock Solemn High Mass)

Matthew 16:13-19

In its present form, the feast of the Confession of Saint Peter is a fairly recent addition to the Church calendar. Up until 1960, the Roman Church kept January 18th as the Feast of Saint Peter’s Chair at Rome. In the apse at the back of St. Peter’s Basilica stands the magnificent Bernini bronze sculpture encasing the chair traditionally identified as the one on which Saint Peter sat to preside at worship as the first Bishop of Rome.

The bishop’s chair is, of course, an item of great symbolic significance. In Judaism, rabbis would sit in a chair to teach. The Gospels describe Jesus sitting down to teach – most notably as he delivers the Sermon on the Mount. And so the apostles and bishops of the earliest church likewise would preside at worship from a seat from which they would teach and which came to symbolize both the content of their teaching and their teaching authority.

In the early centuries of Church history, the great see cities of the Christian world were careful to preserve the chairs on which their founding bishops had sat. According to Eusebius, writing in the fourth century, Jerusalem preserved the chair of Saint James, and Alexandria preserved the chair of Saint Mark. In the late second century, Tertullian wrote: “Visit the apostolic churches in which the very chairs of the apostles preside in their places. If you are near Italy, there is Rome.” 

One of the Latin words for chair, cathedra, is the root of the English word cathedral, the church where the bishop has his chair. So, the Feast of St. Peter’s Chair celebrated Saint Peter’s teaching authority as the first Bishop of Rome – authority which was believed to be derived from our Lord’s words in today’s Gospel: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.”

In the old Roman calendar, January 18th was identified as the date when Saint Peter first presided over an assembly of the faithful after his arrival in Rome. A second feast of Saint Peter’s Chair at Antioch was kept on February 22nd. According to Gregory the Great, after leaving Jerusalem, Peter went first to Antioch where he stayed for seven years; and then he went to Rome, where he lived twenty-five years before his martyrdom during the persecution of the Emperor Nero.

Records indicate that during the pontificate of Pope Damasus in the fourth century, a wooden chair, identified as that of Saint Peter, was kept in the baptistery in old Saint Peter’s Basilica. Following baptisms, the pope would sit on the chair, and the newly baptized would be brought to him to receive an anointing with oil, known as the consignatio, or Sacrament of Confirmation.

During the Middle Ages, the Chair of Saint Peter would be brought from the baptistery to the High Altar on February 22nd, which was believed to be the anniversary of the date on which Peter had confessed Jesus to be the Christ and was in turn identified by Jesus as the rock on which he would build his Church. At their enthronements, also, new Popes would be seated on this chair, brought from the baptistery to the high altar for the occasion.

In the seventeenth century, to preserve this precious relic, Pope Alexander VII had it encased in the Bernini sculpture in which it sits today. In 1867, however, it was exposed for veneration by the faithful, and photographed. The photographs show a very medieval-looking chair that has been added to and embellished over the centuries with panels of acacia wood and inlaid ivories. Nonetheless the original frame of oak, much worm-eaten, is also clearly visible; and there is no reason to dismiss the possibility that this is the frame of the chair on which Saint Peter sat as he began his ministry as the Bishop of Rome.

In 1960, the Roman Catholic Church abolished the January 18th Feast of St. Peter’s Chair, keeping it instead on February 22nd. In the 1970s, however, a number of churches of the Anglican Communion, including our own Episcopal Church, added a Feast of the Confession of Saint Peter to their calendars on January 18th to mark the beginning of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

So we’ve come full circle. In its current form, the feast of the Confession of Saint Peter is a fairly new addition to the Church Calendar. Nonetheless, a rich history stands behind it. Its trajectory begins with Peter confessing Jesus to be the Messiah, the Christ, at Caesarea Philippi. It continues through Peter’s subsequent ministry as bishop first at Antioch and then at Rome. The Chair of Saint Peter symbolizes both his teaching and his teaching authority, grounded in the faith that expressed itself in his original Confession of Jesus as the Christ.

I encourage us all to observe the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity between now and next Sunday. Pray not only for the healing of the divisions of the sixteenth-century Reformation, but also for reunion between the historic Churches of the Christian East and West. It seems to me that here in Rhode Island we are significantly lacking in ecumenical interaction and cooperation – including joint worship service – and I wish we could do more.

Beginning the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity with the feast of the Confession of Saint Peter reminds us that Christian unity cannot be predicated on good feelings and warm relationships alone, nor even on cooperation in matters of shared pastoral concern and social witness. Genuine Christian unity must also rest upon the rock of the faith and teaching of the apostles, of whom Peter was the acknowledged leader and spokesman. In our search for Christian unity, then, we can do no better than to seek to re-appropriate and re-immerse ourselves in this shared heritage of apostolic faith and teaching symbolized by the Chair of Saint Peter at Rome.