I learned from a dear friend of mine that a congregation cannot get with the preacher in the preaching of the sermon if the preacher isn’t first with the people. So in order to connect with you this morning I want to reveal to you at the beginning of the sermon something that perhaps falls in the “confession” category. I just realized that as soon as I mentioned “confession” that I received your undivided attention.
My confession is that I was confused last night at the Easter Vigil when in the midst of our joyous celebration some great friends told me, “Oh great your first Easter here!” I was confused because since the very moment I set foot in this church, since the very moment we started to get to know each other you made me feel fully alive. And one way you know you are fully alive is when you get in touch with your belovedness because someone else is making sure that you feel loved. Now, that is Easter! Loordy, No wonder I was confused…I’ve been having Easter ever since. Every time that you share your love with someone, you are indeed offering that person an invitation to an Easter experience.
The truth is that there is a spiritual force at work when we gather as a community and that same spiritual force sends us out into the world to bear witness and proclaim in words and actions the unconditional love of God for all creation. That’s why I think that the measure of a healthy is church is not whether the people who go to church there have better lives but whether the people who don’t go to church there have better lives because of the people who do go to church there. Healthy religion is about knowing how beloved you are and taking practical steps to make sure that other people know how beloved they are.
If I had to say one word and sit down, which, of course, there is no way in hell I’m going to do, but if I had one word to say, that word would be “don’t give up, have courage.” You see, I knew it, I already said five words instead of one. “Courage is the quality most essential to understanding the language of the world.” You and I understand what it means to stand alone for what one perceives to be right and just. “Don’t give up, have courage.”
The way the Biblical writers kept the disciples of the early church on their feet with courage was to hang pictures of the Hebrew prophets and great saints on the walls of their minds…those who kept on believing even when the lights of the world went out, those beautiful leaders of old who kept on loving in a violent world and remained hopeful in a sea of despair and cynicism.
The Biblical writers said to the early disciples: “Go into that picture gallery of the great heroes of our faith – Abraham, Moses, Amos, Ruth and Naomi, Peter, Paul, Timothy, Mary,
Elizabeth and Mary Magdalene – and linger in their presence and gain courage for life.”i
People come to this place each day, each Sunday, and everything about them says they are facing great difficulties. Life is hard. Life isn’t easy for many these days. Severe difficulties are inevitable and we must struggle. Relationships falter, close loved ones die, economies fail, dreams fade, hope dies in the dark.
William Sloane Coffin knew a great deal about both joy and sorrow. He once said from his personal experience that divine joy unites with human pain. He says, “Try to recall in your own life some moment of great pain or terrible confusion, a moment that had intense suffering, perhaps. You know that at such moments there is nothing more important than the presence of another person who cares. That someone does not have to say anything. In fact, not to speak is often better. Advice, or any attempt to cheer you up, is generally experienced as a refusal to enter into your pain and suffering.”ii
Dr. Coffin recalls how one early morning in 1982, he received word that his son, in his early twenties, had been killed in a horrible car accident. Friends, also notified, came to his apartment in Manhattan and he said, “I can hardly remember a word of what was said, but I’ll never forget the facial expressions. I’ll never forget the arms around me. The fact that friends came at all at four in the morning helped prevent despair.” He rushes to say, “Always remembered this: Just as all the water in the sea cannot sink a boat unless the water gets inside; so all the despair in the world cannot bring you under unless it seeps into your soul.” (Ibid, p. 219) “The mere presence of friends helped prevent despair – not from seeping, but from flooding my soul, drowning me in grief.”
The Easter story according to John begins with these words “Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb.” Let’s not forget that the Easter story we celebrate today is preceded by the waters of despair seeping in the hearts and minds of the disciples. Fear and the horror of what we did as human beings to God’s son paralyzed them in such a way that they went home and stayed closed doors. But the story tells us that someone visit them in their despair: Mary Magdalene.
John’s narrative is full of drama: the race to the tomb and the irony of mistaken identity.
John does remarkable things to the traditional stories surrounding Easter. His emphasis certainly falls on the reality of the resurrection, but the focus is not a resurrected Jesus who materializes to his disciples. It is the fact that resurrection means God has vindicated Jesus and that as the Son he has returned to the Father, initiating the new stage in God’s history with humanity. God comes in the darkest night of our soul.
When we read John’s account of the Easter story side by side with Matthew, Mark and Luke
We run into a remarkable difference that shed some insights into John’s message for us today.
Let’s see what this is. Mark introduces the story of the Easter morning by saying: “Very early on the first day when the sun had risen.” Matthew says: “On the first day of the week as the day was dawning.” Luke says: “Very early at early dawn.” But John says: “Early on the first day while it was still dark.”
Now, I think you will agree with me that this not about John being able to tell the difference between sunrise and sunset. As you might recall, John’s gospel is unique from the other gospels in regards to his use of symbolism and theological account of Jesus’ life. John’s gospel is permeated with images of darkness and light, day and night as a way of talking about the hardships of life. That is why when John describes God’s mission in the world, John says “the light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.” It is in John’s gospel that Jesus says: “I am the light of the world; whoever follows me will not walk in the darkness but will see the light of life.” Early in the morning, while it was still dark… that is …while we are still looking into the uncertainty of our future, when we face doubt and discouragement and everything in our life seems to go wrong; when we find ourselves at the edge of the tomb, Mary Magdalene has a message that will see us through to the other side, Mary Magdalene will visit you at four am, while is still dark, her message is that our redeemer lives!
You probably have heard the story of a tightrope walker who was going to cross across the great Niagara Falls. He advertised that he was to walk across the falls and people gathered from far and near to see the tightrope walker. So he took his balancing pole in his hand and prepared to walk across the falls and he shouted to the gathered crowd: Do you believe that I can walk across the falls? Do you believe? And they responded: We believe, we believe! He took the pole in his hand and he crossed the fall and came back and they responded: Bravo, bravo, bravo! He said now, do you believe that I can cross the fall pushing a wheel bearer with my hands. Sure, sure, we believe, we believe! So he took the wheel bearer on his hands and he pushed the wheel bearer across the fall and came back and they responded: Bravo, bravo, bravo! He said, now do you believe that I can walk across the falls, pushing a wheel bearer with a blindfold over my eyes?
They said yes, you are the man, go ahead, we believe, we believe! So he put the blindfold over his eyes, pushed the wheel bearer and crossed the falls and came back and they were just ecstatic; Bravo, bravo, bravo! Then he said, now do you believe that I can push the wheel bearer across the fall, blindfold over my eyes with somebody riding on the wheel bearer? Sure, sure, we believe! Do you really believe that I can do that? Sure we believe it we believe! Do you really believe? Yes we believe it. He said; Do I have a volunteer?
My brothers and my sisters we are gathered today because we are daring to follow Mary Magdalene into the wheel bearer! Mary Magdalene was the volunteer who came back with the message that Jesus lives. So that we can shout today, bravo, bravo, he is risen! alleluia! Amen.
i George Regas
ii William Sloane Coffin, “Joy,” The Collected Sermons of William Sloane Coffin; The Riverside Years, Volume 2, p. 220
This is a temporary posting due to several requests. Sermon with complete citations will be posted later.
Easter Vigil Homily-Jim Lee
A father and his college-aged son sit in the driveway of their suburban home, the father relaying to his son the story of how he received his name. In Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel, The Namesake, Ashoke Ganguli finally reveals to his son why he doesn’t have a Bengali or American sounding name but of all things, a namesake derived from the famous Russian writer: Gogol Ganguli. It’s a story that Gogol has never heard, a story that his father has kept from him until this moment: three decades earlier, while reading the short stories of Nikolai Gogol, the train that he was riding in derailed, killing almost everyone on board and severely injuring young Ashoke. Gogol’s eyes fill with tears, as he takes in this horrible story of death and destruction, and asks his father, “Is that what you think of when you think of me? Do I remind you of that night?” “’Not at all,’ his father replies tenderly, one hand going to his ribs, a habitual gesture that has baffled Gogol until now,” Lahiri writes. “‘You remind me of everything that followed.’”
After the bells have stopped clanging to proclaim the arrival of Easter, after the echoes of “Alleluia” have died down, after we look ourselves into that empty tomb that is our sign that Christ is once again loose in the world, we might if only for a moment remind ourselves of where we’ve come from, the journey that we’ve taken. The Lenten season began with these words, as ashes were smudged on our foreheads: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Or as Lily Tomlin puts it, “We’re all in this together. And none of us is getting out of it alive.” To remember intentionally our mortality every year is not because the Church is principally a Debbie Downer of an organization, but rather a call, a reminder, that our time on this earth is brief, that to live fully is to live into our truest selves while breath is still in us. Our rector invited us throughout Lent to enter a journey in which we might deliberately discern how we might rediscover our true selves as beloved children of God, of finding our way home to God. We have heard stories about being reminded what that journey home looks like: in a distant land, a son remembers his father and returns, and a father embraces him as a dead person come alive again; a prophet goes into the wilderness to be tested and reminded what really matters in life; a God remembers God’s people crying for freedom from exploitation and servitude.
And this evening, as we listened and sang about God’s saving deeds in history, the stories that we turn to are stories of God relentlessly remembering us, especially in those moments when we feel utterly forgotten: God remembering God’s creation as good out of the deep chaos, God leading God’s people out of Egypt; God remembering the bones of Israel, even in the midst of this scene of genocide, so that new life might emerge. In our gospel lesson, the messengers who deliver the news of the risen Christ to the women – and there’s another sermon to preach, but of course it is the women who are the first to experience Easter, and the first to proclaim it – these messengers who ask them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” answer their own question by commanding the women, “Remember.” And sure enough, the women do remember, and Easter happens for them.
Remembrance is part of God’s saving acts in human history. Remembrance is how Easter happened and how Easter happens. Easter is not about setting Lent aside, or about enduring Good Friday just long enough so that we can get to this moment and say to ourselves, “Whew. Glad that’s over.” Easter isn’t a celebration of life without death. Easter is a celebration of life after death, of life amidst death. Easter isn’t about forgetting the intentional and hard journey we’ve taken. Rather, Easter is a culmination of Lent, of the Passion, of this journey though Gethsemane, Golgotha and finally to this place, where we, like the women, are given the imperative to remember, because that’s how God brings new life into the world, even worlds that die: even when all seems lost, even as all is lost, God remembers. And this divine remembering is more than memorial, the kind where we place headstones. No, God’s remembering is so powerful than our chief symbol of this kind of remembrance is the empty tomb: God’s remembrance bursts from the tomb, and from this a community is reborn. God’s remembrance is God’s way of bringing new life to you and me, God remembering the essence of our true selves and therefore an invitation to live into this true self.
This then is what we mean when we say that we are an Easter people: we are a community that remembers as God remembers. We are not a rapture people but a resurrection people. We are not a community that forgets pain and suffering and death, pretend that these stark realities don’t exist. We remember it all, we embrace each other in our mutual pains and sorrows, we look into the darkness of the tomb, and in remembering as God remembers, we become that spark of light in the dark tomb. The light shines and burns a bit brighter and then brighter still and we realize that the tomb is empty. When we remember as God remembers, we bring resurrection to every person, every moment, every place that needs resurrection, an Easter spark in our Good Friday world. While we wait until this night to say alleluia, we bring Easter with us anytime we stand with those who are forgotten, left for dead. While tonight is the night we say the Lord is risen indeed, we bring Christ to life anytime we feed, clothe, heal, comfort the least of these, for in doing so we care for Christ. While tonight we shout with joy and ring bells for the Passover of our Lord, we experience God’s liberation for ourselves and other every time we remember the true self of every human being and every creature of God, as God’s beloved, whom God regards as beautiful and good, even and especially after the world has drilled into them that they are unlovable. My sisters and brothers, tonight we celebrate Easter, but as we leave here may we be an Easter people to a Good Friday world, so that when those whom we encounter ask “Do I remind you of that night?” we can say to them as God does to God’s beloved creation, “Not at all. You remind me of everything that followed.”
After the bells have stopped clanging to proclaim the arrival of Easter, after the echoes of “Alleluia” have died down, after we look ourselves into that empty tomb that is our sign that Christ is once again loose in the world, we might if only for a moment remind ourselves of where we’ve come from, the journey that we’ve taken. The Lenten season began with these words, as ashes were smudged on our foreheads: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Or as Lily Tomlin puts it, “We’re all in this together. And none of us is getting out of it alive.” To remember intentionally our mortality every year is not because the Church is principally a Debbie Downer of an organization, but rather a call, a reminder, that our time on this earth is brief, that to live fully is to live into our truest selves while breath is still in us. Our rector invited us throughout Lent to enter a journey in which we might deliberately discern how we might rediscover our true selves as beloved children of God, of finding our way home to God. We have heard stories about being reminded what that journey home looks like: in a distant land, a son remembers his father and returns, and a father embraces him as a dead person come alive again; a prophet goes into the wilderness to be tested and reminded what really matters in life; a God remembers God’s people crying for freedom from exploitation and servitude.
And this evening, as we listened and sang about God’s saving deeds in history, the stories that we turn to are stories of God relentlessly remembering us, especially in those moments when we feel utterly forgotten: God remembering God’s creation as good out of the deep chaos, God leading God’s people out of Egypt; God remembering the bones of Israel, even in the midst of this scene of genocide, so that new life might emerge. In our gospel lesson, the messengers who deliver the news of the risen Christ to the women – and there’s another sermon to preach, but of course it is the women who are the first to experience Easter, and the first to proclaim it – these messengers who ask them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” answer their own question by commanding the women, “Remember.” And sure enough, the women do remember, and Easter happens for them.
Remembrance is part of God’s saving acts in human history. Remembrance is how Easter happened and how Easter happens. Easter is not about setting Lent aside, or about enduring Good Friday just long enough so that we can get to this moment and say to ourselves, “Whew. Glad that’s over.” Easter isn’t a celebration of life without death. Easter is a celebration of life after death, of life amidst death. Easter isn’t about forgetting the intentional and hard journey we’ve taken. Rather, Easter is a culmination of Lent, of the Passion, of this journey though Gethsemane, Golgotha and finally to this place, where we, like the women, are given the imperative to remember, because that’s how God brings new life into the world, even worlds that die: even when all seems lost, even as all is lost, God remembers. And this divine remembering is more than memorial, the kind where we place headstones. No, God’s remembering is so powerful than our chief symbol of this kind of remembrance is the empty tomb: God’s remembrance bursts from the tomb, and from this a community is reborn. God’s remembrance is God’s way of bringing new life to you and me, God remembering the essence of our true selves and therefore an invitation to live into this true self.
This then is what we mean when we say that we are an Easter people: we are a community that remembers as God remembers. We are not a rapture people but a resurrection people. We are not a community that forgets pain and suffering and death, pretend that these stark realities don’t exist. We remember it all, we embrace each other in our mutual pains and sorrows, we look into the darkness of the tomb, and in remembering as God remembers, we become that spark of light in the dark tomb. The light shines and burns a bit brighter and then brighter still and we realize that the tomb is empty. When we remember as God remembers, we bring resurrection to every person, every moment, every place that needs resurrection, an Easter spark in our Good Friday world. While we wait until this night to say alleluia, we bring Easter with us anytime we stand with those who are forgotten, left for dead. While tonight is the night we say the Lord is risen indeed, we bring Christ to life anytime we feed, clothe, heal, comfort the least of these, for in doing so we care for Christ. While tonight we shout with joy and ring bells for the Passover of our Lord, we experience God’s liberation for ourselves and other every time we remember the true self of every human being and every creature of God, as God’s beloved, whom God regards as beautiful and good, even and especially after the world has drilled into them that they are unlovable. My sisters and brothers, tonight we celebrate Easter, but as we leave here may we be an Easter people to a Good Friday world, so that when those whom we encounter ask “Do I remind you of that night?” we can say to them as God does to God’s beloved creation, “Not at all. You remind me of everything that followed.”
Good Friday meditation-the Rev. Abel E. Lopez
Good Friday meditation
The Rev. Abel E. Lopez
John 19:28–31, 38–42
The Rev. Abel E. Lopez
John 19:28–31, 38–42
About sixteen years ago, I visited the Niagara Falls. I was
driving and finally came to a point where I could park, get out of the car and
see the incredible magnificence of the fall. As far as my eyes could see there
were these beautiful different shades of green from the trees and blue raging
water that made me think of life as the unstoppable force of the universe, and
that that life was God. It was an
amazing experience. The beauty and splendor of the view is difficult to grasp
by someone else’s description or even by seeing a good photograph. What I found
particularly amazing as I was standing there, was that despite the incredible
grandeur of what I was seeing, if I would just turn around and face in the
other direction, all I would see is a parking lot, a flat lifeless area. Which
way I was facing made a huge difference in the view. We can be in the same
spot. Where we stand is important, but also the direction we face because it
determines what we see. Every year during this Good Friday service I’m reminded
of that old experience I had at the Niagara Falls.
Please, summon all of your senses; your imagination and
stand with me at the cross for a moment. I want you to look with me in that direction.
Biblically speaking, what we see in today’s reading is a
landscape of anguish. Today’s gospel story is a reading that pushes us into a
world of darkness, betrayal, naked power, cowardice and of death. We see
violence, betrayal, humiliation, suffering, abandonment, cruelty, devastated
hopes, bloodshed and death. Wouldn’t you tremble at the scene? Imagine the
trauma of a mother at seeing her own son nailed to a cross, in pain, in agony? How must have been for the others Mary and the
disciple Jesus loved? Did Jesus have a
break down moment because of the upcoming betrayal of Judas, one of his own,
his friend; or was he greatly disappointed with Peter’s violent action of
cutting off the ear of Malchus, which contradicted the nature of God’s Kingdom
and Jesus’ ministry? Jesus tells Peter: “Put your sword back into its case!
Most likely meaning: I’m not about retaliation, cruelty and violence but about
love, forgiveness, acceptance and compassion.
Do we have the bravery to witness such horror today? My friends, in this 21st century
what crucifixions are we witnessing in our time? How our modern crosses look like? Who are we hanging in them? Are you on a cross?
I once read how a caterpillar turns into a butterfly. After the caterpillar spins its cocoon, its
body and all its organs break down into an amorphous, formless soup. But within this lifeless paste are a few
cells that scientists call “imaginal cells.”
It is as though their molecular structure has the “imagination” for a
whole new creature. And as these
“imaginal cells” begin to gather themselves together, a genetic code wakes
up. These “imaginal cells” use the old
carcass as their nutrition, and they multiply and grow into a new body, a
beautiful new creature with wings that seeks its way to freedom, flight and
migration--things that the caterpillar knew nothing of.
I wondered if Jesus might have gone through something like
this spiritually in his way from the garden to his death in the cross. I like
to believe that maybe Jesus’ spirit’s imaginal cells took over, and reorganized
his whole being in a way that was totally free of sadness and distress; free of
fear, free of his own suffering and death.
This is our potential and our destiny as spiritual beings. I
believe that you and I can go through the same transformative, imaginal process
spiritually and theologically. I’d like very much for that to be our experience
particularly, in regards to the way much of Christianity has interpreted and
formulated a theology of the cross, an atonement theology that can so easily
freeze our growth and faith at the caterpillar stage.
That theology tells us that “Jesus’ crucifixion is God’s
design and will.” That in my mind is
sadistic theology. I believe God doesn’t want death on the cross for any, much
less for Jesus, God’s own. It
seems to me that an anthropology of the cross is essential to a theology of the
cross because it helps us to know more clearly who we are as human beings and
how it is that we so tenaciously cling to our idols, our dark gods to perform
our dark deeds against one another and somehow inflict suffering and feel
justified in doing so.
As I think about our life journey’s and the journey we will
take today, I want to speak to you in
the Good Fridays of your own life. It is not a perspective on suffering, but
rather a perspective from your suffering.
First, I personally believe that the suffering of Jesus is
not what makes this week holy. Rather, it is holy because of the inexplicable
and immeasurable love that prompted that suffering. So, today I want to remind
you of this magnanimous, infinite, life giving love, a love that took the son
of God all the way to the cross. I want
more than anything, for you to know, in the depths of your soul that this same
love remains with you today. Know that
where ever you are, in the low of the valleys, alone and lost in the forest, or
standing and declaring victory from the tallest hill the love of God always
break through to embrace you with the warmth and comfort. God will also break
down your cocoons of life and help you find your imaginal cells and organize
your life around the gifts you would love to develop and offer to the world.
God will let your body and mind be linked to your heart and soul. God will let your words speak the language of
love. You are a child of the Eternal.
Your purpose is to find as many ways as you can to link your mortal life with
the eternal by loving yourself and others and by making that love a reality in
your own life, in someone else’ life, and in this world at large.
This transformation that renews
our minds and carries us beyond our own ego drive for pleasure, comfort and
security, places us at a higher vantage point.
From that vantage point we see that there are no inherently “evil”
people or inherently “good” people–just people with the capacity for both good
and evil. From that vantage point we can
see how deceit, violence, domination, and exploitation set in motion the energy
of destruction. And we can see how compassion, generosity, forgiveness, and
selfless sacrifice set in motion the energy of creation.
When you begin seeing the world
in this way, you are no longer content to just “get along” or “go along” with
the way things are. You become willing,
even compelled, to throw your gifts, your time and your life into God’s ongoing
work of transforming the kingdom of greed into the kingdom of God.
One person who became very well
known for seeing that and acting on it, was Mahatma Gandhi.
Gandhi believed completely and
totally in what he called “truth force,” “love force” or “soul force.” Gandhi staked everything on his belief that
the truth of our inherent interconnectedness is woven into the fabric of
creation, and that it has an unstoppable dynamic power within it. When we align ourselves with it, it transforms
us, the world around us, and even those who oppose and persecute us.
So as Gandhi struggled to
liberate the people of India from colonialism, he persuaded the Indian freedom
fighters not to fight against their enemies, but with courage and compassion,
make themselves vulnerable to them.
Their actions countered their oppressors in a way that confused and
disarmed. They said:
“We will match our capacity to
suffer against your capacity to inflict the suffering,
our soul force against your
physical force. We will not obey you, but we will not hate you. Do what you
like, and we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer.
And in the winning of the
freedom we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you. So
ours will be a double victory; we will win our freedom and our captors in the
process.”1
I
believe that this Good Friday service offers an invitation to reposition
ourselves; it calls us to examine where we stand as a human race, as followers
of Jesus, as individuals. Where we stand as a church today is important. The
direction we face will reveal what we see, will determine what we do, will
define our mission. It calls us to turn the flat lifeless desolations of our
time into a landscape of justice, peace, beauty, reconciliation and love. Amen
1. E. Stanley Jones, Mahatma Gandhi–An Interpretation,
published in 1948, and later re-published by Abingdon Press under the title Gandhi–Portrayal
of a Friend. The piece quoted is
from pp. 88-89 in both editions.
Good Friday meditation-Jim Lee
A meditation on John 19:17-27.
It’s perhaps not surprising but still striking that after the men in this terrible story are done betraying Jesus, denying Jesus, judging and condemning Jesus, rejecting him, mocking him, cursing him, flogging him, torturing him, on the way to executing him, that it is the women of the story who stand there, silent sentinels and witnesses to this scene of human brutality and tragedy. The women and the one John calls the beloved disciple are all that remain to be present at Jesus’ final moment; everyone else whom Jesus called friends just a few chapters earlier, those who pledged their lives to Jesus through thick and thin, have scattered, part of that larger group of people who skirt the stark reality of the end of a human life by betraying, denying, judging, cursing and mocking, playing games as if that were a way to whistle away the sounds of a man’s life draining away. But these four, three women and a beloved man, stay with Jesus to the end, stand at the foot of the cross, perhaps holding each other to keep each other from falling down in shock and grief. And there, in the midst of this scene of utter horror, of a mother, an aunt, friends watching their beloved not only dying but dying through terrible suffering, in this nadir of human experience, there are final gifts bestowed, the gifts of the dying and of those courageous enough to witness death.
Please forgive me. I forgive you. Thank you. I love you. These are what Dr. Ira Byock, one of the leaders in palliative and hospice care, calls the four things that matter most. These eleven words—Please forgive me. I forgive you. Thank you. I love you—constitute the heart of restored relationship and deep reconciliation between people, even and especially those we love most, those we love most and perhaps those whom we often take for granted. These are the words that matter most when when we are cast into the gauntlet of death. These eleven words, these four things, no matter how they are uttered, what words are used, or whether words are used at all, are the gifts that we bring to each other, especially when a life is ending. “From the moment we get that diagnosis,” Dr. Byock recounts, “all of a sudden, oh, my, has life changed… It throws in sharp contrast how important we are to one another, how much we care about one another. The connections between people are the things that matter most. If one were to ask somebody's who's being wheeled into transplant surgery, you know, heart or liver transplant surgery or someone who's facing chemotherapy for the third or fourth time, ‘What matters most?’ Trust me, the answers will always include the names of people they love. What's filling our Palm Pilots or our iPhone calendars starts to drop away really fast when someone we love is seriously ill.” Death, like birth, is a portal that throws open the doors of perception that invites us to see with utter clarity the sacredness that is in every human life. And there is no better way to honor this innate sacredness, this God dwelling inside every human being, than to express these four things as someone is dying, when the zone between life and death is a porous, thin place.
Jesus’ mother and aunt and friends stand at the foot of the cross and watch him die, and in doing so they give him the gift of community, that in these final moments he will not be alone, that he will die not only amongst those who revile him but also with those who love him and honor him. Jesus looks at his mother in his own way says to her, “Please forgive me. I forgive you. Thank you. I love you.” And with that Mary’s heart, broken with grief, begins to heal as the beloved disciple holds her as a son might hold his dying mother. While the other men in the story continue to shout and cry and curse, continue to squabble about titles or gamble and engage in transaction over cloth, Jesus and his family and friends look into each other’s eyes for one last moment, and see God dwelling in each other. They spend these last moments saying good-bye to another, Good-Bye, which is, after all, another way of saying God be with you.
It’s perhaps not surprising but still striking that after the men in this terrible story are done betraying Jesus, denying Jesus, judging and condemning Jesus, rejecting him, mocking him, cursing him, flogging him, torturing him, on the way to executing him, that it is the women of the story who stand there, silent sentinels and witnesses to this scene of human brutality and tragedy. The women and the one John calls the beloved disciple are all that remain to be present at Jesus’ final moment; everyone else whom Jesus called friends just a few chapters earlier, those who pledged their lives to Jesus through thick and thin, have scattered, part of that larger group of people who skirt the stark reality of the end of a human life by betraying, denying, judging, cursing and mocking, playing games as if that were a way to whistle away the sounds of a man’s life draining away. But these four, three women and a beloved man, stay with Jesus to the end, stand at the foot of the cross, perhaps holding each other to keep each other from falling down in shock and grief. And there, in the midst of this scene of utter horror, of a mother, an aunt, friends watching their beloved not only dying but dying through terrible suffering, in this nadir of human experience, there are final gifts bestowed, the gifts of the dying and of those courageous enough to witness death.
Please forgive me. I forgive you. Thank you. I love you. These are what Dr. Ira Byock, one of the leaders in palliative and hospice care, calls the four things that matter most. These eleven words—Please forgive me. I forgive you. Thank you. I love you—constitute the heart of restored relationship and deep reconciliation between people, even and especially those we love most, those we love most and perhaps those whom we often take for granted. These are the words that matter most when when we are cast into the gauntlet of death. These eleven words, these four things, no matter how they are uttered, what words are used, or whether words are used at all, are the gifts that we bring to each other, especially when a life is ending. “From the moment we get that diagnosis,” Dr. Byock recounts, “all of a sudden, oh, my, has life changed… It throws in sharp contrast how important we are to one another, how much we care about one another. The connections between people are the things that matter most. If one were to ask somebody's who's being wheeled into transplant surgery, you know, heart or liver transplant surgery or someone who's facing chemotherapy for the third or fourth time, ‘What matters most?’ Trust me, the answers will always include the names of people they love. What's filling our Palm Pilots or our iPhone calendars starts to drop away really fast when someone we love is seriously ill.” Death, like birth, is a portal that throws open the doors of perception that invites us to see with utter clarity the sacredness that is in every human life. And there is no better way to honor this innate sacredness, this God dwelling inside every human being, than to express these four things as someone is dying, when the zone between life and death is a porous, thin place.
Jesus’ mother and aunt and friends stand at the foot of the cross and watch him die, and in doing so they give him the gift of community, that in these final moments he will not be alone, that he will die not only amongst those who revile him but also with those who love him and honor him. Jesus looks at his mother in his own way says to her, “Please forgive me. I forgive you. Thank you. I love you.” And with that Mary’s heart, broken with grief, begins to heal as the beloved disciple holds her as a son might hold his dying mother. While the other men in the story continue to shout and cry and curse, continue to squabble about titles or gamble and engage in transaction over cloth, Jesus and his family and friends look into each other’s eyes for one last moment, and see God dwelling in each other. They spend these last moments saying good-bye to another, Good-Bye, which is, after all, another way of saying God be with you.
Good Friday meditation-Dee Tucker
Good Friday
March 30, 2013
Reflection on John 18:28, 33 - 40
Ask anyone today, what is truth? And you’re sure to start an interesting conversation. Try it on a university campus and you’re likely to receive laughter, scorn, and derision. The concept of truth has clearly fallen on hard times, and the consequences of rejecting it are ravaging human society. So let’s go back to the starting point and answer the question: What is truth?
Today we heard one of the most profound and eternally significant questions in the Bible posed by an unbeliever. Pilate—the man who handed Jesus over to be crucified—turned to Jesus in His final hour, and asked, “What is truth?” It was a rhetorical question, a cynical response to what Jesus had just revealed: “I have come into the world, to testify to the truth.”
Two thousand years later, the whole world breathes Pilate’s cynicism. Some say truth is a power play, constructed by the elite for the purpose of controlling the ignorant masses. To some, truth is subjective, the individual world of preference and opinion. Others believe truth is a collective judgment, the product of cultural consensus, and still others flatly deny the concept of truth altogether.
So, what is truth?
Here’s a simple definition drawn from what the Bible teaches: Truth is that which is consistent with the mind, will, character, glory, and being of God. Even more to the point: Truth is the self-expression of God. That is the biblical meaning of truth. Because the definition of truth flows from God, truth is theological.
Could it be that Truth is a fancy way of saying it is the way things really are? Reality is what it is because God declared it so and made it so. Therefore God is the author, source, determiner, governor, arbiter, ultimate standard, and final judge of all truth.
Perhaps there are two aspects of truth – facts and stories. For example, the facts of Dee Tucker are – I was born into a two parent, two child picket fence, southern Baptist home in Missouri….my world was shattered by the death of my sister at age 17…..now I live and worship in Santa Ana CA. I am testifying to my truth. Yet, that does not tell you my journey from then to now and what’s happened to me because of that unexpected death, and what it means to live after your family changed so drastically and discover the living breathing power of being a human being.
And you know whenever there is a crisis, like 9/11; do you notice how the whole of the United States turned towards the stories in order to learn the truth of that horrific event? We knew the facts – planes flew into the buildings. We knew the number of deaths. Yet, what we wanted to know was what happened in those buildings, what happened to the people who were connected to the people in those buildings? Because that is the only way we can make sense out of life, is through the stories. And the facts are a certain number of people died there but the stories are about the greatness of being a human being and the vulnerability of being human. These are the truths of that event.
How many of us can own our own story? How many of us can stand in vulnerability to share our truths with others? Do we wear the armor of the Roman soldier or the power of a Pilate rather than the simple garment of Jesus.
Our challenge is to own our story – and to love ourselves thru the process of owning our story. To stand in the truth in all our nakedness…. That is the bravest, most courageous thing we’ll ever do.
What is courage- the word comes from Latin word cur – meaning heart. The original definition is to share your whole story with your whole heart. This act of courage is an act of storytelling….the truth of your story.
How many of us can listen to another’s truth? Another’s story? Or are we uncomfortable? Are we feeling we must do something to make it ‘better’? Or can we simply be the Christ like presence, the witness to that story?
A Few Good Men is a 1992 American film revolving around the court martial of two U.S. Marines charged with the murder of a fellow Marine and the tribulations of their lawyer as he prepares a case to defend his clients. Do you remember the famous line uttered by Colonel Nathan R. Jessep (Jack Nicholson) in response to Lieutenant Junior Grade Daniel "Danny" Kaffee (Tom Cruise), “You can’t handle the truth!”
Is this us? Can we handle the truth when someone shares they have been abused? Can we handle the truth when someone says I am a recovering alcoholic? Can we handle the truth when faced with a homeless person? Or do we squirm and shift in our chairs wishing the topic could return to how gorgeous the day is today?
Jesus used stories to teach us truths in the parables. Jesus' parables are seemingly simple and memorable stories, often with imagery, and all convey messages. Scholars have commented that although these parables seem simple, the messages they convey are deep, and central to the teachings of Jesus.
Many of Jesus' parables refer to simple everyday things, such as a woman baking bread (parable of the Leaven), a man knocking on his neighbor's door at night (parable of the Friend at Night), or the aftermath of a roadside mugging (parable of the Good Samaritan); yet they deal with major religious themes, such as the growth of the Kingdom of God, the importance of prayer, and the meaning of love. These stories revealing the truths for us to live by.
What is truth? It is what every human being wants - to be seen and heard. To be valued. They want to know - Do I matter? And does what I say mean anything to you? This is the truth of Jesus as he stood before Pilate. Do you see me? Do you hear me? Am I valued? Do I matter? Does what I say mean anything to you?
There is a Jewish story - In the beginning there was only the holy darkness, the Ein Sof, the source of life. And then, in the course of history, at a moment in time, this world, the world of a thousand thousand things, emerged from the heart of the holy darkness as a great ray of light. And then, perhaps because this is a Jewish story, there was an accident, and the vessels containing the light of the world, the wholeness of the world, broke. And the wholeness of the world, the light of the world was scattered into a thousand thousand fragments of light, and they fell into all events and all people, where they remain deeply hidden until this very day. Now, according to the story, the whole human race is a response to this accident. We are here because we are born with the capacity to find the hidden light in all events and all people, to lift it up and make it visible once again and thereby to restore the innate wholeness of the world. It's a very important story for our times.
Can we see the light? Can we handle the truth?
March 30, 2013
Reflection on John 18:28, 33 - 40
Ask anyone today, what is truth? And you’re sure to start an interesting conversation. Try it on a university campus and you’re likely to receive laughter, scorn, and derision. The concept of truth has clearly fallen on hard times, and the consequences of rejecting it are ravaging human society. So let’s go back to the starting point and answer the question: What is truth?
Today we heard one of the most profound and eternally significant questions in the Bible posed by an unbeliever. Pilate—the man who handed Jesus over to be crucified—turned to Jesus in His final hour, and asked, “What is truth?” It was a rhetorical question, a cynical response to what Jesus had just revealed: “I have come into the world, to testify to the truth.”
Two thousand years later, the whole world breathes Pilate’s cynicism. Some say truth is a power play, constructed by the elite for the purpose of controlling the ignorant masses. To some, truth is subjective, the individual world of preference and opinion. Others believe truth is a collective judgment, the product of cultural consensus, and still others flatly deny the concept of truth altogether.
So, what is truth?
Here’s a simple definition drawn from what the Bible teaches: Truth is that which is consistent with the mind, will, character, glory, and being of God. Even more to the point: Truth is the self-expression of God. That is the biblical meaning of truth. Because the definition of truth flows from God, truth is theological.
Could it be that Truth is a fancy way of saying it is the way things really are? Reality is what it is because God declared it so and made it so. Therefore God is the author, source, determiner, governor, arbiter, ultimate standard, and final judge of all truth.
Perhaps there are two aspects of truth – facts and stories. For example, the facts of Dee Tucker are – I was born into a two parent, two child picket fence, southern Baptist home in Missouri….my world was shattered by the death of my sister at age 17…..now I live and worship in Santa Ana CA. I am testifying to my truth. Yet, that does not tell you my journey from then to now and what’s happened to me because of that unexpected death, and what it means to live after your family changed so drastically and discover the living breathing power of being a human being.
And you know whenever there is a crisis, like 9/11; do you notice how the whole of the United States turned towards the stories in order to learn the truth of that horrific event? We knew the facts – planes flew into the buildings. We knew the number of deaths. Yet, what we wanted to know was what happened in those buildings, what happened to the people who were connected to the people in those buildings? Because that is the only way we can make sense out of life, is through the stories. And the facts are a certain number of people died there but the stories are about the greatness of being a human being and the vulnerability of being human. These are the truths of that event.
How many of us can own our own story? How many of us can stand in vulnerability to share our truths with others? Do we wear the armor of the Roman soldier or the power of a Pilate rather than the simple garment of Jesus.
Our challenge is to own our story – and to love ourselves thru the process of owning our story. To stand in the truth in all our nakedness…. That is the bravest, most courageous thing we’ll ever do.
What is courage- the word comes from Latin word cur – meaning heart. The original definition is to share your whole story with your whole heart. This act of courage is an act of storytelling….the truth of your story.
How many of us can listen to another’s truth? Another’s story? Or are we uncomfortable? Are we feeling we must do something to make it ‘better’? Or can we simply be the Christ like presence, the witness to that story?
A Few Good Men is a 1992 American film revolving around the court martial of two U.S. Marines charged with the murder of a fellow Marine and the tribulations of their lawyer as he prepares a case to defend his clients. Do you remember the famous line uttered by Colonel Nathan R. Jessep (Jack Nicholson) in response to Lieutenant Junior Grade Daniel "Danny" Kaffee (Tom Cruise), “You can’t handle the truth!”
Is this us? Can we handle the truth when someone shares they have been abused? Can we handle the truth when someone says I am a recovering alcoholic? Can we handle the truth when faced with a homeless person? Or do we squirm and shift in our chairs wishing the topic could return to how gorgeous the day is today?
Jesus used stories to teach us truths in the parables. Jesus' parables are seemingly simple and memorable stories, often with imagery, and all convey messages. Scholars have commented that although these parables seem simple, the messages they convey are deep, and central to the teachings of Jesus.
Many of Jesus' parables refer to simple everyday things, such as a woman baking bread (parable of the Leaven), a man knocking on his neighbor's door at night (parable of the Friend at Night), or the aftermath of a roadside mugging (parable of the Good Samaritan); yet they deal with major religious themes, such as the growth of the Kingdom of God, the importance of prayer, and the meaning of love. These stories revealing the truths for us to live by.
What is truth? It is what every human being wants - to be seen and heard. To be valued. They want to know - Do I matter? And does what I say mean anything to you? This is the truth of Jesus as he stood before Pilate. Do you see me? Do you hear me? Am I valued? Do I matter? Does what I say mean anything to you?
There is a Jewish story - In the beginning there was only the holy darkness, the Ein Sof, the source of life. And then, in the course of history, at a moment in time, this world, the world of a thousand thousand things, emerged from the heart of the holy darkness as a great ray of light. And then, perhaps because this is a Jewish story, there was an accident, and the vessels containing the light of the world, the wholeness of the world, broke. And the wholeness of the world, the light of the world was scattered into a thousand thousand fragments of light, and they fell into all events and all people, where they remain deeply hidden until this very day. Now, according to the story, the whole human race is a response to this accident. We are here because we are born with the capacity to find the hidden light in all events and all people, to lift it up and make it visible once again and thereby to restore the innate wholeness of the world. It's a very important story for our times.
Can we see the light? Can we handle the truth?
Good Friday meditation-Biff Baker
Sermon, Good Friday, March 29, 2013, Episcopal Church of the Messiah, Santa Ana, California
Reading: John 18:1-11
Harold D. Baker
As church-going folks, we spend a lot of time hearing about Jesus, or you might say we spend a lot of time with Jesus in our minds, which can make us take certain things for granted. (Or, if you're not really a church-going person, welcome to Messiah! There's a yellow card in the back of the pew in front of you. . .) Now, I would suggest that we like to spend time with Jesus because of a particular reality that surrounds him much of the time, and that we can observe in the Gospels. In Jesus' presence, what is more remarkable than any miracle is the bizarre phenomenon that people are made to appear, not necessarily good, but human: drawn out of their public roles and personae, they are revealed as weak, fearful, vacillating, impulsive, trusting, generous, capable of the utmost devotion as well as the grossest treachery, in other words, complex, unpredictable. Think about it; even the great villains of the Gospels are not unmixed evil: Pilate, for example, is clearly intrigued by Jesus and reluctant to condemn him. Even characters drawn in a single stroke have depth and unpredictability: the criminals flanking Jesus on the cross who converse with him at the last moment, the centurion watching from below who proclaims him surely a righteous man. In the words of the popular Spanish hymn, Jesus indeed looks into our eyes and calls us by an individual name; this is important to us, and we want to stay in that moment.
There comes a time, however, when Jesus in turn appears as complex and unfathomable, when it is no longer about us, so to speak, but about his own freedom and destiny and the great conflict to which all of his actions lead us.
***
Just last Sunday the annual Blessing of the Streets took place a few blocks from here, in the Logan Barrio neighborhood just past St. Joseph's Catholic Church. Many of you know how this tradition started. About 20 years ago that area was plagued by gang violence. One tragic night a young man was shot in a drive-by just outside of St. Joseph's, and he died on the sidewalk, cradled in the Priest's arms. The first Blessing of the Streets was organized to resist the violence of the gangs, with Messiah as a founding participant. Imagine the feelings of those stepping out for the first time! Who could be sure how the gang members would respond? It was their turf! Tonight at 6:30 we have the Via Crucis through places of suffering in downtown Santa Ana. "Out of the narthex and into the streets," that's our motto around here.
We become aware of a world of violence outside of our protected spaces of cultural, economic, and I would even say spiritual privilege, and a realm of need or necessity that violence feeds on, that is its enveloping nutrient. There is the plain, naked violence of war, crime, domestic and sexual abuse, and there are also the more oblique forms of political violence, all pressing in on the sheltered spaces of our fragile humanity.
In the Gospel reading we just heard, the world of violence, force, and compulsion intrudes suddenly into the garden that Jesus had used as a place of prayer and teaching.
This moment comes to us quite differently than in the other three Gospels. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, it is preceded by the scene of Jesus' praying the garden, where he asks for the "cup" to pass him by, and Peter, John, and James fall asleep waiting for him. This scene is missing in John, where emphasis is on the collision between Jesus' small group and the massive cohort of soldiers sent to arrest him. We have to imagine that the garden is dark; the crowd of armed people comes in with lamps and lanterns, and Jesus steps into their light. It is literally a collision, and the force of Jesus' emergence is such that they fall backward and onto the ground. Though Jesus is a bound prisoner through most of the Passion narrative, at this moment he acts freely and powerfully.
Artistic depictions of Jesus' arrest often focus on two dramatic details: Judas' kiss and the cutting of the servant's ear. In John's Gospel, the kiss is omitted, but the incident of the ear is prominent; in particular, the servant is given a name, Malchus. In one anonymous painting from 1520, which you can see at the Art Museum of Dijon (or on the internet: see References), France, the servant is shown as a slender young man sprawled backward on the ground, vainly trying to defend himself, flailing with his lantern, screaming wildly. St. Peter, large and strong, crouches over him, his eyes cold, a sword raised over and behind his head. The servant clearly expects the blow to kill him. Jesus is already bound at neck and hands and being hurried away, but all his attention is bent on the helpless victim. He has forgotten his own situation entirely for the pity of this young man. We recall the servant as paradigm in the teachings of Jesus. Hours earlier, he had been washing his disciples' feet to illustrate this teaching a final time. Now he sees this servant suffering violence from one of his own disciples.
In one of his very short plays, Thornton Wilder depicts Malchus in a conversation with Jesus in heaven. Malchus wants to be removed from Scripture because the role he plays is so ridiculous. Jesus reminds him that his place in Scripture is essential, that he shares in Jesus' moment of deepest humiliation.
We can ask ourselves many questions about this incident. How did Peter happen to have a sword? True, Jesus tells his disciples to buy swords (Luke 22:36), and they respond as though it were a literal command, not a prophetic figure of speech. Then, what motivated his action?
If Jesus stands firm in the face of the world's violence, the same is not true for his followers. At the moment of collision, the great, pervasive violence of the world enters into Peter at this moment and claims his obedience. In the presence of great evil, he becomes that evil in a miserable, petty form, and seeks an outlet for his rage in the nearest and easiest target available.
How truly this speaks to our culture! We love our guns and we love our power. We believe profoundly in readiness, retribution, and "armed response" (posted in front of so many comfortable homes); this includes many professed followers of Jesus. Yet the Gospel passage draws a clear contrast between Jesus' response and that of Peter. On Jesus' side stands a whole tradition of moral exemplars who have chosen the higher path of sacrificial resistance.
In San Francisco an Episcopal church has covered its interior with a panoply of mostly unconventional "Dancing Saints." Some of these we know: Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mohandas Gandhi, Rabbi Abraham Heschel, Julian of Norwich. Others are probably unfamiliar: Bartolomé de las Casas, a 16th c. priest who was the first Christian theologian to reject all forms of slavery; Iqbal Masih, a Pakistani boy murdered in 1995 at age 13 for urging other bonded child laborers to leave their masters; Jenny Read, a San Francisco artist, an Episcopalian, murdered in 1976 at age 31 while working on a sculpture of St. John of the Cross; Wang Zhiming, a Chinese Christian pastor martyred by the Red Guards in 1973; Maria Skobtsova, a beer-drinking, cigarette-smoking Russian nun, killed in Paris by the Nazis for concealing Jews.
What is the meaning of these crazy lives? In wrestling with the phenomenon of sacrifice, the philosopher and mystic Simone Weil (herself one of the Dancing Saints) speaks of a "transferal of suffering":
The captain who has been scolded by his colonel relieves himself by scolding the lieutenant. . . The smashed porcelain vase cannot be restored, but, fortunately, the slave who broke it can be flogged to ribbons. . . If the slave falls to his knees, the sensation of having him in your power may sometimes be enough.
The whipped slave--or even if he was only humiliated by having to beg for mercy--will then need to find his own satisfaction. All evil that arises in this world must travel from one head to another . . . until it arrives at one who is perfectly pure. That one accepts it in its entirety, and, in this acceptance, the evil is destroyed. (105-06)
We recognize here the pattern and model of Christ's passion. The evil that has traveled throughout history arrives at the great Kairos or center-point of time and lands on the head of one perfectly pure, the Paschal Lamb, the Lamb of God, who accepts it, and that ends its dominion.
From our perspective far off in time we look back--or forward--to this center as the goal of our Holy Week pilgrimage. The evil and violence of the world are all around us, and they still make us dance to their old tune, and we are tired sometimes. But here at Messiah, we are not discouraged, we're just getting warmed up! As the choir sang last Sunday, "No man can hinder me." In 1939, on the eve of war, W.H. Auden wrote: "Yet, dotted everywhere, / Ironic points of light / Flash out wherever the Just / Exchange their messages." That is something to be, an ironic point of light. Let us pray to be ironic, to be light, to be together, and to keep the faith of this path that we are on.
*****
REFERENCES
L'arrestation du Christ [The Arrest of Christ]. Anonymous, 1520, Burgundy. Museé des Beaux-Arts de Dijon. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/The_capture_of_Christ_mg_1677.jpg
Auden, W.H. "September 1, 1939." First published in The New Republic, October 18, 1939.
Dancing Saints Icon Project. All Saints Company.
http://www.allsaintscompany.org/dancing-saints-icon-project.
Weil, Simone. La Connaissance Surnaturelle [Supernatural Understanding; containing her American notebooks from May to November 1942 and London notes from 1943]. Collection Espoir. [Paris:] Librairie Gallimard, 1950.
Wilder, Thornton. "Now the Servant's Name Was Malchus." In The Collected Short Plays of Thornton Wilder, Vol. II, pp. 53-56. New York: Theatre Communications Group, Inc., 1998.
Reading: John 18:1-11
Harold D. Baker
As church-going folks, we spend a lot of time hearing about Jesus, or you might say we spend a lot of time with Jesus in our minds, which can make us take certain things for granted. (Or, if you're not really a church-going person, welcome to Messiah! There's a yellow card in the back of the pew in front of you. . .) Now, I would suggest that we like to spend time with Jesus because of a particular reality that surrounds him much of the time, and that we can observe in the Gospels. In Jesus' presence, what is more remarkable than any miracle is the bizarre phenomenon that people are made to appear, not necessarily good, but human: drawn out of their public roles and personae, they are revealed as weak, fearful, vacillating, impulsive, trusting, generous, capable of the utmost devotion as well as the grossest treachery, in other words, complex, unpredictable. Think about it; even the great villains of the Gospels are not unmixed evil: Pilate, for example, is clearly intrigued by Jesus and reluctant to condemn him. Even characters drawn in a single stroke have depth and unpredictability: the criminals flanking Jesus on the cross who converse with him at the last moment, the centurion watching from below who proclaims him surely a righteous man. In the words of the popular Spanish hymn, Jesus indeed looks into our eyes and calls us by an individual name; this is important to us, and we want to stay in that moment.
There comes a time, however, when Jesus in turn appears as complex and unfathomable, when it is no longer about us, so to speak, but about his own freedom and destiny and the great conflict to which all of his actions lead us.
***
Just last Sunday the annual Blessing of the Streets took place a few blocks from here, in the Logan Barrio neighborhood just past St. Joseph's Catholic Church. Many of you know how this tradition started. About 20 years ago that area was plagued by gang violence. One tragic night a young man was shot in a drive-by just outside of St. Joseph's, and he died on the sidewalk, cradled in the Priest's arms. The first Blessing of the Streets was organized to resist the violence of the gangs, with Messiah as a founding participant. Imagine the feelings of those stepping out for the first time! Who could be sure how the gang members would respond? It was their turf! Tonight at 6:30 we have the Via Crucis through places of suffering in downtown Santa Ana. "Out of the narthex and into the streets," that's our motto around here.
We become aware of a world of violence outside of our protected spaces of cultural, economic, and I would even say spiritual privilege, and a realm of need or necessity that violence feeds on, that is its enveloping nutrient. There is the plain, naked violence of war, crime, domestic and sexual abuse, and there are also the more oblique forms of political violence, all pressing in on the sheltered spaces of our fragile humanity.
In the Gospel reading we just heard, the world of violence, force, and compulsion intrudes suddenly into the garden that Jesus had used as a place of prayer and teaching.
This moment comes to us quite differently than in the other three Gospels. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, it is preceded by the scene of Jesus' praying the garden, where he asks for the "cup" to pass him by, and Peter, John, and James fall asleep waiting for him. This scene is missing in John, where emphasis is on the collision between Jesus' small group and the massive cohort of soldiers sent to arrest him. We have to imagine that the garden is dark; the crowd of armed people comes in with lamps and lanterns, and Jesus steps into their light. It is literally a collision, and the force of Jesus' emergence is such that they fall backward and onto the ground. Though Jesus is a bound prisoner through most of the Passion narrative, at this moment he acts freely and powerfully.
Artistic depictions of Jesus' arrest often focus on two dramatic details: Judas' kiss and the cutting of the servant's ear. In John's Gospel, the kiss is omitted, but the incident of the ear is prominent; in particular, the servant is given a name, Malchus. In one anonymous painting from 1520, which you can see at the Art Museum of Dijon (or on the internet: see References), France, the servant is shown as a slender young man sprawled backward on the ground, vainly trying to defend himself, flailing with his lantern, screaming wildly. St. Peter, large and strong, crouches over him, his eyes cold, a sword raised over and behind his head. The servant clearly expects the blow to kill him. Jesus is already bound at neck and hands and being hurried away, but all his attention is bent on the helpless victim. He has forgotten his own situation entirely for the pity of this young man. We recall the servant as paradigm in the teachings of Jesus. Hours earlier, he had been washing his disciples' feet to illustrate this teaching a final time. Now he sees this servant suffering violence from one of his own disciples.
In one of his very short plays, Thornton Wilder depicts Malchus in a conversation with Jesus in heaven. Malchus wants to be removed from Scripture because the role he plays is so ridiculous. Jesus reminds him that his place in Scripture is essential, that he shares in Jesus' moment of deepest humiliation.
We can ask ourselves many questions about this incident. How did Peter happen to have a sword? True, Jesus tells his disciples to buy swords (Luke 22:36), and they respond as though it were a literal command, not a prophetic figure of speech. Then, what motivated his action?
If Jesus stands firm in the face of the world's violence, the same is not true for his followers. At the moment of collision, the great, pervasive violence of the world enters into Peter at this moment and claims his obedience. In the presence of great evil, he becomes that evil in a miserable, petty form, and seeks an outlet for his rage in the nearest and easiest target available.
How truly this speaks to our culture! We love our guns and we love our power. We believe profoundly in readiness, retribution, and "armed response" (posted in front of so many comfortable homes); this includes many professed followers of Jesus. Yet the Gospel passage draws a clear contrast between Jesus' response and that of Peter. On Jesus' side stands a whole tradition of moral exemplars who have chosen the higher path of sacrificial resistance.
In San Francisco an Episcopal church has covered its interior with a panoply of mostly unconventional "Dancing Saints." Some of these we know: Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mohandas Gandhi, Rabbi Abraham Heschel, Julian of Norwich. Others are probably unfamiliar: Bartolomé de las Casas, a 16th c. priest who was the first Christian theologian to reject all forms of slavery; Iqbal Masih, a Pakistani boy murdered in 1995 at age 13 for urging other bonded child laborers to leave their masters; Jenny Read, a San Francisco artist, an Episcopalian, murdered in 1976 at age 31 while working on a sculpture of St. John of the Cross; Wang Zhiming, a Chinese Christian pastor martyred by the Red Guards in 1973; Maria Skobtsova, a beer-drinking, cigarette-smoking Russian nun, killed in Paris by the Nazis for concealing Jews.
What is the meaning of these crazy lives? In wrestling with the phenomenon of sacrifice, the philosopher and mystic Simone Weil (herself one of the Dancing Saints) speaks of a "transferal of suffering":
The captain who has been scolded by his colonel relieves himself by scolding the lieutenant. . . The smashed porcelain vase cannot be restored, but, fortunately, the slave who broke it can be flogged to ribbons. . . If the slave falls to his knees, the sensation of having him in your power may sometimes be enough.
The whipped slave--or even if he was only humiliated by having to beg for mercy--will then need to find his own satisfaction. All evil that arises in this world must travel from one head to another . . . until it arrives at one who is perfectly pure. That one accepts it in its entirety, and, in this acceptance, the evil is destroyed. (105-06)
We recognize here the pattern and model of Christ's passion. The evil that has traveled throughout history arrives at the great Kairos or center-point of time and lands on the head of one perfectly pure, the Paschal Lamb, the Lamb of God, who accepts it, and that ends its dominion.
From our perspective far off in time we look back--or forward--to this center as the goal of our Holy Week pilgrimage. The evil and violence of the world are all around us, and they still make us dance to their old tune, and we are tired sometimes. But here at Messiah, we are not discouraged, we're just getting warmed up! As the choir sang last Sunday, "No man can hinder me." In 1939, on the eve of war, W.H. Auden wrote: "Yet, dotted everywhere, / Ironic points of light / Flash out wherever the Just / Exchange their messages." That is something to be, an ironic point of light. Let us pray to be ironic, to be light, to be together, and to keep the faith of this path that we are on.
*****
REFERENCES
L'arrestation du Christ [The Arrest of Christ]. Anonymous, 1520, Burgundy. Museé des Beaux-Arts de Dijon. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/The_capture_of_Christ_mg_1677.jpg
Auden, W.H. "September 1, 1939." First published in The New Republic, October 18, 1939.
Dancing Saints Icon Project. All Saints Company.
http://www.allsaintscompany.org/dancing-saints-icon-project.
Weil, Simone. La Connaissance Surnaturelle [Supernatural Understanding; containing her American notebooks from May to November 1942 and London notes from 1943]. Collection Espoir. [Paris:] Librairie Gallimard, 1950.
Wilder, Thornton. "Now the Servant's Name Was Malchus." In The Collected Short Plays of Thornton Wilder, Vol. II, pp. 53-56. New York: Theatre Communications Group, Inc., 1998.
Palm Sunday sermon-Ellen Hill
From Advent to Christmas, from Lent, to Palm Sunday to Good Friday to Easter. From the Ascension to Pentecost and throughout that long stretch of Ordinary Time, we Christians wait. And that waiting time, in each one of those holy seasons, has the power to challenge and stretch and purify us. If we cooperate, it can also transform us.
Palm Sunday, the feast we celebrate this day, initiates that week in the church year which Christians cherish as no other, which is why we call it Holy Week. For Palm Sunday leads us into the solemn high feast of God’s dark glory and dreadful grandeur. It inaugurates the most awesome and terrifying time of waiting in the church year. For the reality is that the Holy Week Liturgies form the core of the church’s self understanding because they set forth for us the meaning and the nature of Christian life.
And yet, why is it that so often during Holy Week you and I waver in our waiting? Each year, what always begins with our zealous straining to catch a glimpse of the young rabbi riding on a donkey somehow turns to tedium and then to a dulled-belief. Maybe it’s because the narratives of Jesus’ suffering and death intrude upon our notions of God and God’s place and presence in our lives. Is it because in this day and time of drones and Navy seals and power rangers that nobody wants to believe in, much less depended upon a crucified God? Or is it because we already know the end of the story which Palm Sunday begins.
We know that when the women arrive at the tomb on the third morning that the stone will be rolled away, the grave will be empty and an angel will be pointing to the folded grave clothes. We already know that a resplendent Christ will pass through walls and will show himself to his fearful disciples. And so perhaps because we already know the end of the story, it’s difficult for us to wait through Holy Week and yet wait we must. For the very realization and meaning of our Christian identity is recapitulated in this waiting time of Holy Week. For Holy Week teaches us that while nothing is impossible with God we still have to wait for the realization of that possibility. And that’s very difficult to do in an age that values activity and has very little respect for passivity or contemplation.
You and I seem to be happiest when we have something we can do don’t we? Something we can plan or plot or scheme or devise or work or produce. And because of the incredible technological sophistication of our contemporary context we’re always tempted to contrive: to control the uncontrollable, future and destiny, success and defeat, history and mystery. We’ve come a long way in our efforts to master chance in our lives. But Palm Sunday wants to counter all that energy and momentum. And so it seeks to slow us down. The man who comes seated on that donkey is a sign of contradiction. He’s a threat to the God whom we’ve made over in our own image. A God of high achievement, and performance, majesty and power, triumph and transcendence.
So when we’re asked to see God in Jesus of Nazareth, it unnerves and disturbs us. His crucifixion and death disclose the chosen vulnerability of God. The willingness of God to come among us, to share our ordinary lot, to suffer with us, and most of all, to suffer for us. Jesus refuses all power to determine the choices of those who decide his fate. He relinquishes all authority to overturn the vicious trajectory which fear and anger have conceived. He stands before us as messiah and king. But he’s not the kind of king for whom we’ve waited. What we get is the presence of Jesus of Nazareth, bruised and battered, the Man of Sorrows. He’s no omnipotent sovereign. He’s nothing but a wounded healer who’s worn himself out in love in order to lead us to his beloved Father.
And each year it’s Holy Week that gives us an opportunity to recover a deeper relationship with God and with other human beings. But we’re a people who value doing over being. So we’re troubled each year when Palm Sunday invites us during that week we call holy quite literally to stop our doing and instead simply be with God. We’re invited to draw near to the heart of that One whom we know and love. And it’s Palm Sunday which also reminds us, that this is the time when we wait with God in simple silence offering only our presence and through that presence the gift of ourselves.
There’s very little in modern life to prepare us to grasp the horror and the shame and the repulsion that crucifixion meant. In those times It was primarily a form of military and political punishment. In the Roman Empire it was the supreme penalty. Sadistic and cruel, it was conceived to dishonor and desecrate. In nearly all instances crucifixion was reserved for those of the lowest classes, the slaves and subjugated people of the Roman Empire because it was intended to intimidate by example and to subdue by horrific display. It was really high state theatrical violence.
Crucifixion called for the public display of a naked victim in some prominent place: at a crossroads, in an amphitheater, on high ground. Often the victim was first flogged and then made to carry the cross-beam through the streets to the place of execution. The victim’s hands and feet were nailed to the wood and after that torment had been completed, if the victim were still alive, death would eventually come from suffocation. Since the victim was unable to support the weight of his body with his hands, the diaphragm would be slowly crushed. And then what was most horrifying and insulting to the ancient people, the victim’s body would be left to rot rather than being buried.
It’s most probably this image of the crucified messiah which so disturbs and confuses us and which brings us to anguish. As the old hymn says, what we see there on Calvary causes us to tremble. For if our God suffers like that and is so exposed to the brutality and power of the world what will become of us? It’s both a daring and a daunting theological question. But let’s not forget that the waiting time of Holy Week also involves hope. For as William Lynch said, “the ability to wait is central to hope.” Present to one another and to God, waiting in silence and prayer with patience you and I will begin to recover the eschatological hope which is signified in the resurrection.
It’s Holy Week which prepares us to live in that hope. In that place of active creative waiting. Holy Week teaches us to hope in future possibility even in the face of all that is negative and seemingly devoid of hope in our lives. When we hope in the absolute future we grasp what was required of Jesus for he staked his whole life on its being directed towards God. He trusted that his life had a definite meaning in God. And he believed that God would save him and deliver him absolutely. That’s the hope that binds back to the heart of God the whole of creation which has been scattered by sin.
That’s the hope that heals and restores..that waits and creates. Palm Sunday is the high solemn feast of God’s dark glory and dreadful grandeur and it ushers in the most awesome and terrifying waiting time in the Church year. This coming week is holy for what it teaches us is to wait. To value being, presence and silence. To love without reserve. To live in compassionate and practical solidarity with women and men and children who suffer affliction. To hope that out of this waiting in the midst of this love within our solidarity will come the resurrection.
That’s our Palm Sunday hope. And it’s our only hope. That’s what the palms and the shouting were all about. That’s what our singing and worshiping and peaching and praying are all about. The hope that finally by the grace of God the impossible will happen. The hope that Pilate will take him by one hand and Caiaphas by the other and that the Roman soldiers will throw down their spears and the Sanhedrin will bow their heads. The hope that by the power of the Holy Spirit and the love of Christ, who is the Lord of the impossible, the leaders of the enemy nations will draw back while there is still time for drawing back from a vision too terrible to name. The hope that you and I, each one of us in our own pathetic but crucial way, will work, and witness and pray for the things that make for peace both in our own lives and in the life of this planet.
Despair and hope, they travel the road to Jerusalem together as well as every road that you and I take. Despair at what in our madness we are bringing down on our own heads and hope in him who travels the road with us and for us and who is the only one of us all who isn’t mad. Hope in the King who approaches every human heart like a city. And you know it’s a very great hope as hopes go and well worth all our singing and dancing and sad little palms. Because not even death can prevail against this King of ours. Not even the end of the world will be the end of him a the mystery and majesty of his love.
And now for a moment let us pray. Eternal God, as we enter this week of deathly grandeur, lead us out of our familiar settings. Out of our doubts and fears, beyond our pride and our need to be secure so that we may pass into that strange and graceful ease with our true proportions and with yours so that in boundless silence we may grow strong enough to endure, confident enough to hope and through that, flexible enough to share your grace. Amen.
Palm Sunday, the feast we celebrate this day, initiates that week in the church year which Christians cherish as no other, which is why we call it Holy Week. For Palm Sunday leads us into the solemn high feast of God’s dark glory and dreadful grandeur. It inaugurates the most awesome and terrifying time of waiting in the church year. For the reality is that the Holy Week Liturgies form the core of the church’s self understanding because they set forth for us the meaning and the nature of Christian life.
And yet, why is it that so often during Holy Week you and I waver in our waiting? Each year, what always begins with our zealous straining to catch a glimpse of the young rabbi riding on a donkey somehow turns to tedium and then to a dulled-belief. Maybe it’s because the narratives of Jesus’ suffering and death intrude upon our notions of God and God’s place and presence in our lives. Is it because in this day and time of drones and Navy seals and power rangers that nobody wants to believe in, much less depended upon a crucified God? Or is it because we already know the end of the story which Palm Sunday begins.
We know that when the women arrive at the tomb on the third morning that the stone will be rolled away, the grave will be empty and an angel will be pointing to the folded grave clothes. We already know that a resplendent Christ will pass through walls and will show himself to his fearful disciples. And so perhaps because we already know the end of the story, it’s difficult for us to wait through Holy Week and yet wait we must. For the very realization and meaning of our Christian identity is recapitulated in this waiting time of Holy Week. For Holy Week teaches us that while nothing is impossible with God we still have to wait for the realization of that possibility. And that’s very difficult to do in an age that values activity and has very little respect for passivity or contemplation.
You and I seem to be happiest when we have something we can do don’t we? Something we can plan or plot or scheme or devise or work or produce. And because of the incredible technological sophistication of our contemporary context we’re always tempted to contrive: to control the uncontrollable, future and destiny, success and defeat, history and mystery. We’ve come a long way in our efforts to master chance in our lives. But Palm Sunday wants to counter all that energy and momentum. And so it seeks to slow us down. The man who comes seated on that donkey is a sign of contradiction. He’s a threat to the God whom we’ve made over in our own image. A God of high achievement, and performance, majesty and power, triumph and transcendence.
So when we’re asked to see God in Jesus of Nazareth, it unnerves and disturbs us. His crucifixion and death disclose the chosen vulnerability of God. The willingness of God to come among us, to share our ordinary lot, to suffer with us, and most of all, to suffer for us. Jesus refuses all power to determine the choices of those who decide his fate. He relinquishes all authority to overturn the vicious trajectory which fear and anger have conceived. He stands before us as messiah and king. But he’s not the kind of king for whom we’ve waited. What we get is the presence of Jesus of Nazareth, bruised and battered, the Man of Sorrows. He’s no omnipotent sovereign. He’s nothing but a wounded healer who’s worn himself out in love in order to lead us to his beloved Father.
And each year it’s Holy Week that gives us an opportunity to recover a deeper relationship with God and with other human beings. But we’re a people who value doing over being. So we’re troubled each year when Palm Sunday invites us during that week we call holy quite literally to stop our doing and instead simply be with God. We’re invited to draw near to the heart of that One whom we know and love. And it’s Palm Sunday which also reminds us, that this is the time when we wait with God in simple silence offering only our presence and through that presence the gift of ourselves.
There’s very little in modern life to prepare us to grasp the horror and the shame and the repulsion that crucifixion meant. In those times It was primarily a form of military and political punishment. In the Roman Empire it was the supreme penalty. Sadistic and cruel, it was conceived to dishonor and desecrate. In nearly all instances crucifixion was reserved for those of the lowest classes, the slaves and subjugated people of the Roman Empire because it was intended to intimidate by example and to subdue by horrific display. It was really high state theatrical violence.
Crucifixion called for the public display of a naked victim in some prominent place: at a crossroads, in an amphitheater, on high ground. Often the victim was first flogged and then made to carry the cross-beam through the streets to the place of execution. The victim’s hands and feet were nailed to the wood and after that torment had been completed, if the victim were still alive, death would eventually come from suffocation. Since the victim was unable to support the weight of his body with his hands, the diaphragm would be slowly crushed. And then what was most horrifying and insulting to the ancient people, the victim’s body would be left to rot rather than being buried.
It’s most probably this image of the crucified messiah which so disturbs and confuses us and which brings us to anguish. As the old hymn says, what we see there on Calvary causes us to tremble. For if our God suffers like that and is so exposed to the brutality and power of the world what will become of us? It’s both a daring and a daunting theological question. But let’s not forget that the waiting time of Holy Week also involves hope. For as William Lynch said, “the ability to wait is central to hope.” Present to one another and to God, waiting in silence and prayer with patience you and I will begin to recover the eschatological hope which is signified in the resurrection.
It’s Holy Week which prepares us to live in that hope. In that place of active creative waiting. Holy Week teaches us to hope in future possibility even in the face of all that is negative and seemingly devoid of hope in our lives. When we hope in the absolute future we grasp what was required of Jesus for he staked his whole life on its being directed towards God. He trusted that his life had a definite meaning in God. And he believed that God would save him and deliver him absolutely. That’s the hope that binds back to the heart of God the whole of creation which has been scattered by sin.
That’s the hope that heals and restores..that waits and creates. Palm Sunday is the high solemn feast of God’s dark glory and dreadful grandeur and it ushers in the most awesome and terrifying waiting time in the Church year. This coming week is holy for what it teaches us is to wait. To value being, presence and silence. To love without reserve. To live in compassionate and practical solidarity with women and men and children who suffer affliction. To hope that out of this waiting in the midst of this love within our solidarity will come the resurrection.
That’s our Palm Sunday hope. And it’s our only hope. That’s what the palms and the shouting were all about. That’s what our singing and worshiping and peaching and praying are all about. The hope that finally by the grace of God the impossible will happen. The hope that Pilate will take him by one hand and Caiaphas by the other and that the Roman soldiers will throw down their spears and the Sanhedrin will bow their heads. The hope that by the power of the Holy Spirit and the love of Christ, who is the Lord of the impossible, the leaders of the enemy nations will draw back while there is still time for drawing back from a vision too terrible to name. The hope that you and I, each one of us in our own pathetic but crucial way, will work, and witness and pray for the things that make for peace both in our own lives and in the life of this planet.
Despair and hope, they travel the road to Jerusalem together as well as every road that you and I take. Despair at what in our madness we are bringing down on our own heads and hope in him who travels the road with us and for us and who is the only one of us all who isn’t mad. Hope in the King who approaches every human heart like a city. And you know it’s a very great hope as hopes go and well worth all our singing and dancing and sad little palms. Because not even death can prevail against this King of ours. Not even the end of the world will be the end of him a the mystery and majesty of his love.
And now for a moment let us pray. Eternal God, as we enter this week of deathly grandeur, lead us out of our familiar settings. Out of our doubts and fears, beyond our pride and our need to be secure so that we may pass into that strange and graceful ease with our true proportions and with yours so that in boundless silence we may grow strong enough to endure, confident enough to hope and through that, flexible enough to share your grace. Amen.
Holy Week
PALM SUNDAY / SUNDAY OF THE PASSION
March 24, 8:00am, 10:15am, and 12:00pm (in Spanish) in the Church.The services of Holy Week commemorate Jesus’ descent into death before the great miracle of Easter. The crowd’s cheers at Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday turn to jeers and the demand for his blood on Good Friday. If you allow yourself to descend to the depths of despair, in what seems to be Jesus’ final hours, you will experience anew the incomparable power of the resurrection of Easter. The Rev. Dr. Ellen Hill preaches.
TENEBRAE (SERVICE OF SHADOWS)
Wednesday, March 27, 7:30pm in the Church.This ancient candlelight service, sometimes called “God in the Darkness” commemorates the somber in-between-time of waiting, offering an opportunity for us to grieve Jesus’ death and sense a glimmer of hope of the resurrection.
MAUNDY THURSDAY
March 28, 6:30pm in the Parish Hall and the Church.This evening service recalls the last supper Jesus shared with his disciples. The congregation is invited to participate in the ceremony of footwashing, symbolic of the servant ministry Jesus instituted with the disciples. The service begins in the Parish Hall at 6:30pm with an Agape Potluck meal of soups, breads, cheeses, and wine. The congregation then processes to the church to continue the service. This is a Spanish/English liturgy. The Rev. Abel Lopez preaches.
GOOD FRIDAY
March 29, Three hour service: 12 noon - 3pm in the Church.This service commemorating the passion and death of Jesus is a major moment in Holy Week. The rector and members of the clergy and laity offer five meditations on the meaning of the crucifixion in our own time. Each meditation is part of a fabric of worship and reflection that includes hymns, scripture, prayers and silence. Jennifer Hughes, Duane Day, Dee Tucker, Jim Lee and Abel Lopez preach.
THE GREAT VIGIL OF EASTER
Saturday, March 30, 7:30pm in the Church.This is an awe-inspiring and transcendent visit to the history of what makes us Christians. We celebrate the conclusion of Holy Week and beginning of Easter. The service begins outside the church with the kindling of the fire and lighting of the Christ candle, and then proceeds into the Church by candlelight to experience the stories of our faith. Bring bells to ring during the Easter moment, as we celebrate the first Eucharist of Easter. The Rev. Jim Lee preaches.
EASTER SUNDAY
March 31, 8:00am, 10:15am, and 12:00pm (in Spanish) in the Church.Each Sunday when we pray over the bread and wine we declare the mystery of faith: Christ is risen. The church gathers on Easter Sunday to celebrate with great shouts of “Alleluia!,” glorious music and inspiring preaching about the resurrection of Jesus and the infinite ways we have access to and participate in eternal life, right here on earth. The Rector, Abel Lopez preaches.
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