Sermon for Christmas Morning: St. Alfred's

title: Sermon for Christmas morning
subtitle: The Rev. Dale C. Hathaway
author: St. Alfred's, Palm Harbor
date: December 25, 2023

Change. Christmas and our relationship to it.

When I was a child I thought like a child. I had dreams like a child. I related to Christmas like a child. When I became an adult I generally related to Christmas like I did when I was a child. I began to have children, and we wanted them to experience Christmas as we had known it. And then especially after I was ordained and had children at home on Christmas morning – children who were especially eager to get gifts unwrapped and surprises unsurprised, we had a rule that before Christmas morning Eucharist everyone could open just one gift – but their daddy had to celebrate the Eucharist so we at a light breakfast and off I went.

Now I'm an old man. Christmas feel different. I see the festivities as if looking on from a distance, and I wonder what happened to Christmas? And what is Christmas? The Christmas spirit? What's it all about?¹

Surely as we age we look on Christmas differently. What do we say when the children and grandchildren are all gone and far away and Christmas is all around us but the old ways don't work the way they used to? It turns out that …

Christmas itself wasn't always the way it is today or yesterday.

For the first two centuries, in the Church, there wasn't a December holiday called Christmas or anything else. There were non-Christian festivals. Fire festivals and prayers to the gods and goddesses. Of course there was the cycle of the sun in relation to the Earth. A relationship that we are newly aware of in the consciousness of global environmental change.

As Christianity became the formal religion of theRoman Empire, things began to change with Christmas. The old ways were stamped out while Christmas, i.e. the celebration of the birth of the Messiah, was implemented. There was a helpful emphasis on the newly decreed faith of the Church: Jesus was both God and Human.

Christmas fell in and out of favor over the years, but it became wildly popular in the 19th century because of the confluence of actions by songwriters, storytellers, state lawmakers, artists, and shopkeepers seeking profits. Come the 20th century and there emerges a Christmas as we now remember it. Traditions and customs that help to make the world go round.

But again I ask, what's it all about?

Nativity as metaphor

I wonder sometimes if it might not be just one giant metaphor. What if the story of the Christ child, born in a manger, with shepherds and kings about him, was a metaphor for an even bigger story? I may get in trouble when I tell you that I think that kind of gets at what it's all about. Christmas is about Incarnation. It is about great human longing and the response to that longing by a loving God.

Incarnation and Embodiment

At the heart of it is a story of a great need. Our needs are changing from youth to adult to old age. Our needs change as we age, but longing itself remains. We long:

• for love
• for hope
• for the ability to overcome evil
• for life in the face of the onslaught of aging and disease
• for well-being in a world that seems to honor avarice and selfishness

“The need is very great” – we can feel it in our bones. We can surely relate to it.

And God said, “I hear you. And I’m sending you Jesus – my beloved son.” -- Christmas – what brings us together today – is our celebration of the great remedy from God – the Incarnation.

The word means: embodiment, personification, epitome, impersonation, portrayal.

It means a turning one thing into another. A becoming. A new beginning.

A parable

Throughout his ministry Jesus told stories. There's something about stories. It seems that perhaps that's a little bit of What it's all about. A famous writer of the 19th century told a story. The story is about a king and a humble maiden.

Suppose there was a king who loved a humble maiden. The king was like no other king. Every statesman trembled before his power. No one dared breathe a word against him, for he had the strength to crush all opponents.

And yet this mighty king was melted by love for a humble maiden who lived in a poor village in his kingdom. How could he declare his love for her? In an odd sort of way, his kingliness tied his hands. If he brought her to the palace and crowned her head with jewels and clothed her body in royal robes, she would surely not resist-no one dared resist him. But would she love him?

She would say she loved him, of course, but would she truly? Or would she live with him in fear, nursing a private grief for the life she had left behind? Would she be happy at his side? How could he know for sure? If he rode to her forest cottage in his royal carriage, with an armed escort waving bright banners, that too would overwhelm her. He did not want a cringing subject. He wanted a lover, an equal. He wanted her to forget that he was a king and she a humble maiden and to let shared love cross the gulf between them. For it is only in love that the unequal can be made equal.

The king, convinced he could not elevate the maiden without crushing her freedom, resolved to descend to her. Clothed as a beggar, he approached her cottage with a worn cloak fluttering loose about him. This was not just a disguise – the king took on a totally new identity – He had renounced his throne to declare his love and to win hers.

A song

Jesus is somehow the perfect "embodiment" of God's response to our great needs. This most amazing truth has been proclaimed from the earliest days of the church. It is about somehow or other God's very self becoming human. One of us.

I took particular delight in a popular song of some years ago. It was titled "One of us" and sung by Joan Osborne. The opening stanza of the song is:

If God had a name what would it be?
And would you call it to his face?
If you were faced with Him in all His glory
What would you ask if you had just one question?

Then in masterful fashion, Osborne sings the line:

"What if God was one of us?"

I was amazed at the popularity of the song at the time. But even more amazed because the singer is asking one of the most profound Christian questions there is. "What if God was one of us?" Well, that is precisely what the Incarnation is all about. That is what happened. And what does it mean? For us, for the world?

God Himself / Herself is embodied in Jesus.

God who is beyond gender was manifest in a very real male person

God who loves and embraces all at all times, from the lowest of the low to the highest of the high, was embodied in a 1st c. Palestinian laborer

God became flesh. It is a most breath-taking proclamation.

"In-carnation"

It is a pregnant and rich concept. On this Christmas day soak it in and hold onto it. Incarnation. God's response to our great needs.

Think of these words:

"Incarnation" is about embodying. In its Christmas usage: at this festival we celebrate the Incarnation of Jesus -- which is to say, "In Jesus we now have the embodiment of God's very self."

Embodiment. Embodies. Jesus the embodiment of God. It connects a noun with a quality. Think of someone who "embodies" the things we long for. The things you need.

• love
• generosity
• self-sacrifice
• service to the least of God's children
• kindness
• gentleness
• gracefulness
• courage

God became flesh to embody those things. Meditate on these and then be them yourself. As Jesus embodies them for you, be that for the world around you.

The big story:

Our God is a great and mighty God. He loves to make things. He loves to love. He is willing to do whatever it takes.

We in this place and this time are the characters in God’s great story. We may be small and insignificant in the larger context of the universe, but we are the most important people right here and right now, for telling the story. Today we celebrate and remember the power and meaning of the Incarnation. And we give thanks. To God.

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1. Alfie (Song by Dionne Warwick)↩

All Saints: St. Alfred's, Nov. 5, 2023

Setting

Who makes saints

Someone asked me the other day who makes Saints? They had observed that some of the people in the church's calendar had "saint" in front of their name and some didn't. How do you get to be a saint? I'm a little surprised at myself that my first instinct was to describe the different ways the Catholic Church and the Episcopal church make a saint. I gave a bureaucratic answer to what I think was a personal question.

Somehow All Saints Day is a very personal day.

There was one thing (Bishop) Scharf said two weeks ago that -- in the language of my youth --"blew me away." He pointed to how the Pharisees were asking one question and Jesus answered a different question. It's so important to listen for the right questions, isn't it. It wasn't just that it was an insight in how to understand that particular exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees. It seemed to be a kind of commentary on the importance of really listening to one another. It seemed almost an explanation for conflict in our lives and our world.

There's are various processes for how one gets "saint" in front of their name. But is that why we're here today? Our congregation is made up of people from a wonderful variety of different church backgrounds. There is I think a wonderful menagerie of different expectations for what the feast of All Saints is about.

I was amazed at that variety when I dug a little bit into the different traditions related to this day. A day that the church has been observing since the 300s. What would it have been like for those Christians in the fourth century as they gathered to celebrate the Saints among them, the Saints who had gone before them, the Martyrs who had died for the sake of the faith that bound them together?

Great variety

Observances

The observance of this feast day for me personally goes back deep into my youth, because my mother -- at the time a recent convert to the Episcopal church -- was keen to distinguish between the holy day of November 1 and the secular day called Halloween. As I learned a little more about the church year in those days, probably leading up to my confirmation, I learned there was a day set aside on November 2 called All Souls Day. Obviously they're not the same thing. But related. Later in my own life I was interested in the different approach to these holidays brought to us by the Day of the Dead -- dios de muerte. Related but not the same.

I was especially impressed when I went to a Lutheran Church where my daughter was married some years ago. They had hanging from the ceiling, high above us, strips of paper containing the names of all the people who had ever been a member of the church. It was like a snow storm of all the saints of that church who had gone before and brought those present to where they were now. For some of us this day conjures up memories of this sort. We pray for them in a litany today.

How rich this day is in meaning and importance to our own lives.

Cloud of witnesses

One of the things that ties together the different elements of this feast day is our fundamental trust and faith in the way we are bound together with those who have gone before us. Every year on this holy day I hear echoed in my mind the words of Hebrews chapter 12:

So then, with endurance, let’s also run the race that is laid out in front of us, since we have such a great cloud of witnesses surrounding us. Let’s throw off any extra baggage, get rid of the sin that trips us up, and fix our eyes on Jesus, faith’s pioneer and perfecter. He endured the cross, ignoring the shame, for the sake of the joy that was laid out in front of him, and sat down at the right side of God’s throne. (CEB Heb 12:1-2)

For myself, one of the foundations of my trust in the great cloud of witnesses that surrounds us came in the form of a message from beyond Death. I was standing alone in an apartment about a month after my father died. I can still remember the scene. I was standing at the kitchen counter minding my own business. I'm not sure what I was doing. But I suddenly heard a voice. It was the voice of my father. And it said, "Don't worry. I'm all right."

One might easily claim that all sorts of things might have produced the sensation in my mind. But from the moment it happened it felt like a message for me from beyond the grave. It felt like a message from God, and left me convinced that what death brings is not dissolution and separation; those are the things that we see and feel. It left me with an unshakable conviction that what death brings is peace and connection with all things and the God who made it all.

All Saints Day is for me the clearest expression of that.

Ancient setting

Who are these saints who surround us? How does scripture portray them? In both Hebrew and then Greek the words for "saint" are in their root meaning having to do with set apart or separate. Saints are different and yet the same as you and I. On the one hand there is the sacred and on the other there is the ordinary. Holiness and sacredness are associated with God. And we are not God.¹

In the New Testament the word "saint" is applied to the followers of Jesus, the believers in Jesus as the Christ. So Paul addresses six of his letters to the Saints, ... of Rome, Corinth, Ephesus ... and so on. The saints in this usage are set apart from those who don't believe. Related to this is the word for Church which means those who are called out, ekklesia.

It turns out that the same concept of being "set apart" for God – "saint" "holy one" – is very like the word Jesus's chief opponents used about themselves. The meaning of the word "Pharisees" is those who are separate, those who are set apart. Set apart for God. Separate from ordinary society. Saint. Paul himself was a Pharisee and then referred to his fellow followers of Jesus as "the saints". Jesus certainly had his conflict with the Pharisees, but they had far more in common than what separated them.

All Saints is all about what binds us together, across the generations and across our differences.

Who am I? How become that?

Reverie as a teenager

On a regular basis when I was a teenager I would spend time in a kind of reverie thinking about the "great cloud of witnesses". I've never forgotten the wonder I felt. It wasn't just parents or grandparents as I understood it. It was all of my ancestors who made it so that I spoke and thought and dreamed in English and not in Swahili. They helped make me who I am for better and for worse, good and the bad, the weak and the strong.

Today I would call that meditating on all the saints, those who bind me together with those who have gone before and those who will come after.

When the bishop spoke to us two weeks ago he gave us a plan of action. He gave us a charge. He charged us with paying attention to the lives we were living because we are made in the image of God. Who we are is children of God. It sounded very much like a short quotation from Bp. Tutu, a quotation that has guided and inspired me for decades. "God has made us responsible for his reputation."

We are a part of that great cloud of witnesses and we bear responsibility for those who come after.

Baptism

Promises:

How ought we to fashion our lives so that we can take our place in the Communion of the Saints? We don't just get there by accident or automatically. What do we have to do or be? An excellent summary is found in the baptismal covenant. We heard it two weeks ago and we make those renewal of vows again today.

1. Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?
2. Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?
3. Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?
4. Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?
5. Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

Who are the saints in your life who have held out for you these ideals and have empowered you to live into them? Is it an aunt or uncle? Or a friend you met in a purely serendipitous way? Whoever they are, we celebrate those Saints today.

Gospel

Those baptismal promises from our Book of Common Prayer have only been around for 50 years or so, but the words of Jesus's Beatitudes have been with us from the beginning. They have been a model and guide for the kind of lives we're talking about today. They point to who we are and whose we are, as Bishop Sharf put it 2 weeks ago. We are children of God made in God's image and responsible for God's reputation.

Who?

Who are the saint or saints who have been models for you and for me of poor in spirit? Dorothy Day has been that for me.

Who are the ones who have shown you that the way out of grief and mourning is into peace and shalom? The martyred nuns in El Salvador? For me it is a woman who breathed her last breath and then finished with the biggest smile you can imagine.

Who are the ones who have guided you with the knowledge that the meek shall inherit the Earth? Takashi Nagai, A Japanese doctor injured during the bombing of Nagasaki, cared tirelessly for other victims and worked towards forgiveness and reconciliation through the establishment of a prayer house, the writing of a book and the planting of thousands of cherry trees to help reclaim the devastated landscape.

Who are the ones who have produced in you a hunger and thirst for righteousness? Sam Shoemaker and the countless anonymous leaders of AA groups throughout the world?

Who are the ones who have exemplified mercy? Mother Teresa? Or perhaps your grandmother?

Who are the peacemakers? Gandhi perhaps? One of them for me was the man who brought together in Raleigh, NC, a leader of the Ku Klux Klan and the local black woman who pestered the city council for justice for the black community.

Who are the martyrs who have shown you the way of life? Oscar Romero? A parishioner I had in the 1990's is one who helped to show me that way of life. She had founded a free medical clinic for Michigan City. As a part of that process she had lived with Mother Teresa in Calcutta. As she talked about that experience the "holiness" of it was palpable to me – gave me, as they say in Hawai'i – "chicken skin". She died of uterine cancer, still in her 30's. Way too young.

Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord: Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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1. What Does "Saints" Mean? Bible Definition and References↩

Proper 18a, Palm Harbor, FL

Proper 18a  
St. Alfred's Church   
The Rev. Dale C. Hathaway  
Sept. 9, 2023

Metaphor for Church

I remember a snippet from a sermon many years ago. I think it was probably in my teens. The preacher made reference to the way in which looking up at the roof of the church it looked like the ribbing of a ship. He said it's not by accident that that part of the church is called a nave. The nave of a church, from the Latin navis meaning "ship." We get our word navy.

Now of course Saint Alfred's doesn't have the appearance of a great sailing vessel of yesteryear, with planks and ribbing. You look up at our ceiling and it looks more like a bobbing teacup or some thing. In fact I guess looking up at the architecture in our church building it looks something like the basket that Moses was floating in down the Nile River. We heard that from the first chapter of Exodus two weeks ago.

Still, all in all, there you have it. The church is as if it was sailing on a journey – to somewhere.

Church on pilgrimage

On the website of the church of England there is a whole section set aside for experiencing the church on a journey from the richness of the past into the unknown riches of the future. ¹ The website describes a new approach to catechism, teaching the way of the faith as a pilgrimage, being on a journey.

This new Pilgrim catechism – The Pilgrim Way – stands in this great tradition, consciously drawing on all that has gone before. It also offers something new for today’s generation of Christians, helping us to understand and live out our faith and identity as followers of Jesus Christ.

In the Catholic Church, over 50 years ago, Vatican II thought of the church as the light of the world. Christ the one lighting the way and the church as the Sacramental presence of Christ to the world.² If the pilgrim people are to be the light of Christ showing the way forward, we must embrace, "The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of (all people)." ³ We the pilgrim people are to be Christ in the world, seeking the way forward into the future which we can only see dimly.

Models of the church

The church as a ship. The church as a pilgrim People. These are not the only metaphors that have been used through the ages. But for me, they are particularly powerful.

The church as a ship was first used in the first and second century in the catacombs. The drawings can be seen still. The church as the people of God is already in the New Testament as we have it.

The word church (ekklesia) appears only two times in the gospels, and we have heard one of those today. The only other use of the word in the gospels is also found in the gospel of Matthew, 2 chapters earlier. Today we hear of the pilgrim people down together, not as a gathering of individuals but as a living body. The earlier reference in Matthew refers to how the church this pilgrim people is in fact founded on a rock foundation.

The word ekklesia was in use centuries before the Christian church appeared on the scene. It referred to an ordinary gathering of citizens, called together to attend to the concerns of their city. In the time the Christian church was forming, the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, (Septuagint), the word ekklesia was used to refer to the people of Israel gathered in sacred assembly.

In the acts of the apostles, the word church refers to the followers of the risen Lord, who are gathered in the different cities. The church in Jerusalem. The church in Antioch. And so on.

Paul refers to the church, as gathered in various places. The opening chapters of the revelation of John are addressed to churches in various places. But in every usage of the word in the New Testament, it refers to a gathering of people, not a building

For many of you that may be common place . But of course it doesn't fit our common usage of the word. For us, church is a building, and all the associated fixtures required to maintain a functioning building.

I had a bishop in Northern Indiana who had once been interned in a Japanese camp during World War II. His father was a missionary there as the war broke out and General MacArthur made his famous retreat. At the end of the war his family made its way to where my Bp. Gray's grandfather was then a bishop -- South Bend, IN. In 1945 the Cathedral church of the diocese was St. Paul's in Mishawaka. When I heard the newly elected grandson Bp. Gray tell this story at St. Paul's, Mishawaka, I happened to be living in the old rectory of that church. The grandson Bp. Gray said that when he, as a youngster walked through those doors, having traveled from the Philippines where the only church he had known was the one gathered around his father in an interment camp, -- he said when he walked through those doors of St. Paul's in 1945 it was the first time he experienced "church as a building". Before that, the only thing he had known was church as a gathered people.

Exodus

Our reading today from the book of Exodus continues the narrative from last week. Fr. Peter referred to the "Big Picture." Moses having a conversation with the living God, the creator of the universe. God commanding him to take off his sandals because he was standing on holy ground. God revealing God's name.

Like the core of the Earth itself, these passages feel like a burning core at the center of God's foundational work for the chosen pilgrim people. This week the narrative is advanced as God and Moses put the last pieces of the deliverance in place. It is the event of Passover that all future Passovers refer to. The people slaughter a lamb and the blood from that offering is spread on the lintel and on the gates of the peoples homes. In the very anthropomorphic imagery used by the text, God uses that blood to recognize the homes of his chosen people so that in his work of destroying the first born of Egypt he will be able to pass over the children of Israel. It is both graphic and vivid.

This is the event that gives its name both to the Jewish Passover and to the salvation offering by Jesus on the cross. Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. As if in reenactment the roasted lamb meal is repeated at every Seder meal from time immemorial to the unknown generations of the future. So too the Eucharist is celebrated both to recall and to make present the salvation once offered to God's people and the goal of our pilgrimage. Observant Jews remind themselves each time they go in and out of their house where that mezuzzah is posted.

4 שְׁמַ֖ע יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל יְהוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֵ֖ינוּ יְהוָ֥ה׀ אֶחָֽד׃ 5 וְאָ֣הַבְתָּ֔ אֵ֖ת יְהוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֑יךָ בְּכָל־לְבָבְךָ֥ וּבְכָל־נַפְשְׁךָ֖ וּבְכָל־מְאֹדֶֽךָ׃ 6 וְהָי֞וּ הַדְּבָרִ֣ים הָאֵ֗לֶּה אֲשֶׁ֨ר אָנֹכִ֧י מְצַוְּךָ֛ הַיּ֖וֹם עַל־לְבָבֶֽךָ׃ 7 וְשִׁנַּנְתָּ֣ם לְבָנֶ֔יךָ וְדִבַּרְתָּ֖ בָּ֑ם בְּשִׁבְתְּךָ֤ בְּבֵיתֶ֙ךָ֙ וּבְלֶכְתְּךָ֣ בַדֶּ֔רֶךְ וּֽבְשָׁכְבְּךָ֖ וּבְקוּמֶֽךָ׃ 8 וּקְשַׁרְתָּ֥ם לְא֖וֹת עַל־יָדֶ֑ךָ וְהָי֥וּ לְטֹטָפֹ֖ת בֵּ֥ין עֵינֶֽיךָ׃ v'qesharthem l'voth al-yadeqa v'tayev l'totapheth beyev eyneyqa 9 וּכְתַבְתָּ֛ם עַל־מְזוּזֹ֥ת בֵּיתֶ֖ךָ וּבִשְׁעָרֶֽיךָ׃ ס vqethabethem al-mizuzoth beytheqa vbeshareyqa

*Hear, O Israel! The Eternal is our God, the Eternal alone.  You shall love the Eternal your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.  Take to heart these instructions with which I charge you this day.  Impress them upon your children.  Recite them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up.  Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a symbol on your forehead; inscribe them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.⁴

For generations, for centuries, Christians have celebrated the eucharist for every imaginable reason in order to make the reality of Christ our Passover present and real in the present day. ## Waking up

Today's readings are an opportunity for us to return at least for the moment to a more ancient understanding of the church. We are the pilgrim people who are gathered together on a journey, sailing in a ship, a nave. Our pilgrimage is not just for ourselves but for the whole world.

In an old saying that I've often repeated, "If that's true it's important."" Paul says it's ultimately important.

[It is] now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than whmakeen we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. 

There is no time to lose. This is the Day the Lord has made. This is the Day the Lord has set before you. So now is the time to start rowing, sailing, walking, or just dreaming of the day to come.

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1. https://www.churchofengland.org/our-faith/pilgrim-way/about-pilgrim-way↩

2. Lumen Gentium (light of the nations) "Christ is the Light of nations. Because this is so ... is in Christ like a sacrament or as a sign and instrument both of a very closely knit union with God and of the unity of the whole human race...↩

3. Gaudium et spes (Joys and hopes)↩

4. Deuteronomy 6:4-9↩

Proper 15a -- Palm Harbor, FL, August 20, 2023

 

Opening

Have you ever looked back at some event in your life and realized that God's hand had been with you all along? At the time you were certain that things were going bad, and you felt all alone and had no idea how to go forward?

Have you ever spent days or weeks or months or even years asking God to deliver you from something, only to discover that what had once looked like oppression was in fact the instrument of God's deliverance?

Have you ever been hit over the head by what's going on in your life and wondered what could God possibly make of all this? Then just asking the question, you understood what God was doing in your life?

Questions like that swirled around me in 2008. The previous year my family had hosted a young student for half a year of school so that she could attend Kamehameha school in Honolulu. It is one of the premier K-12 schools in Hawaii and is reserved for descendants of indigenous Hawaiians. It didn't work out well with other members of my family, and she had to return to her family on Maui at Christmas time.

Somehow I couldn't get the notion of hosting an exchange student out of my head. I had hosted a student from Brazil in 1988 and 89, and it was one of the best experiences of my life. So in 2008 I pursued it some more. I made an application to receive a student from Lebanon under a program that brought to the U.S. young people from Muslim countries, exposing them to the ways of the United States. In the summer of 2008 I drove to the airport and picked up Leen Al Yaman from Saida, Lebanon.

The last time I preached -- some weeks ago -- I talked a little bit about how there is a three-year cycle of lessons that we hear on Sunday morning. In the year 2008 we were reading the same Gospel passages we are hearing this year. The Sunday that year when today’s gospel was read was the first day that I took Leen Al Yaman to church. She was from the town of Saida -- in biblical times it was known as Sidon (of "Tyre and Sidon"). We have heard today about Jesus going away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. There he met a woman desperately seeking help for her daughter. She pleaded with Jesus to cure her, even at a great distance. One thing is especially interesting about this passage. Here is a woman who argues with Jesus and he decides that she's right. She didn’t back down when Jesus said no.

Whoa! That's not what we would have expected of Jesus. In a situation, and with a person that seemed totally unlikely, God acted decisively for healing and for good.

Now that morning in 2008, in my sermon, I made the claim that I heard God putting his stamp of approval on this young lady who had come to live with my family for a year. She was Muslim, and sometimes she had difficulty with our language and customs, but she was completely embraced by our faith community. She read the Quran that year for the first time in her life. She taught us about Middle Eastern cooking. She made a special dish for our regional community celebration of a Seder meal at Passover. There were about 150 in attendance that year. She danced a belly dance down the aisle of Saint Andrew's Cathedral, on the occasion of her and my daughter's graduation from the Priory school for girls.

God blessed her that year, and I first began to recognize it in that sermon on today's gospel.

It has become a conviction of mine, that God generally acts in our lives in ways that we least expect it. In my case it was a young lady, a Muslim, from the land of Tyre and Sidon.

I am grateful for Fr. Agostino's preaching last week as he spoke eloquently about Joseph the son of Jacob. A most unlikely person for God to make the lynchpin for the survival of God's chosen people. In a previous sermon I mentioned how I regard the Old Testament as an important part of our reading of the Bible. He said something that really caught my attention. "God always takes the initiative." He pointed to an important theme in the books of the Torah, namely providing an explanation for the origin of various names and customs that were a part of the life of Israel 3,000 years ago. I use the word Torah to refer to the 1st 5 books of the Bible -- the word torah has other meanings as well). The Joseph saga is, at least in part, intended to give an explanation for why it is that the people of Israel, at one point in their early history, emerged from Egypt, of all places.

Again and again the Bible catches us by surprise (remember how God works).

The hand of God is seen in the choosing of the people Israel. God was in charge through all the wandering, misfires, and exceptional happenings. Joseph is a dreamer. He dreams dreams and the world around him changes. As the Torah was being recited through the generations and then finally written down, the people remembered that they had come from Egypt. They told the story of Joseph to explain how they got to Egypt in the first place. God took them there.

As the people looked back, lo and behold, they could see God's hand at work. It was true for ancient Israel and it is true for us.

Experience with narrative Bible study

For nearly 30 years of my ministry, I was involved with a variety of groups that met weekly for a particular kind of Bible study called African Bible Study. I read somewhere that a similar method had developed at about the same time in Latin America. It is also basically the same practice that the church has used from ancient times, known as lectio divina. Somebody suggested it's more like Bible sharing than what we customarily call Bible study.

In any case, the method that I have used is basically a matter of reading a text from the bible three times. - The first time each person responds to the question: "What stands out in the passage?" - The second time each person responds to the question: "What is God telling me in this passage?" - And the third time, the question is: "What does God want me to do or change as a result of what God has spoken to me?"

Now I have participated in this method many hundreds of times. I used to say that every time one or more persons heard God speak. And indeed lives were changed, sometimes profoundly, sometimes just in ways that a person could get through the next few days with some kind of equanimity. I've stopped emphasizing that God spoke every time because I am very cautious about making universal statements. There are, after all, pretty much always exception, whenever we say something is always the case. But you get the point.

What is God telling us in scripture today?

One thing comes through for me. And that is that our experience and expectations of God are too small for the reality, the majesty, and the mystery of God.

Reading the Bible

One person wrote recently about reading the Bible:

[It] can be as gentle as a watercolor and as powerful as a thunderstorm. It can be taken literally or taken seriously but not always both. It's a library written over centuries, containing poetry and metaphor as well as history and biography, and without discernment, it makes little sense. It has to be, must be, read through the prism of empathy and the human condition.¹

Even more to my point is a book I first read in the 1990's. I quickly accepted the author's argument that we Christians don't follow and put our trust in a big enough God.

The title of the book was, naturally enough, A Big Enough God. The God of the Bible is both majestic and personal. When we expect God to be so majestic as to be out of reach, we end up expecting a God too small to be significant. When we make God all about our very limited perspective in a universe of quasars and quarks, we end up awaiting a God too petty to be God.

"God is not careful, is not bound by the rules. God is careless, profligate even. The imagination of God is outrageous."

That just seems manifestly true to me. Otherwise God is not the God who created the universe and all that is. Consider this passage from Annie Dillard in another classic work titled Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. She describes God's creativity this way:

You are God. You want to make a forest, something to hold soil, lock up solar energy and give off oxygen. Wouldn't it be simpler just to rough in a slab of chemicals, a green acre of goo? ... But look what happens ... Look at practically anything — the coot’s feet, the mantis’ face, a banana, the human ear -- and see that not only did the creator create everything, but that he is apt to create anything. He'll stop at nothing. There is no-one standing over evolution with a blue pencil to say, ‘Now that one there is absolutely ridiculous and I won't have it.’ ... Is our taste so much better than the creator’s? The creator creates. Does he stoop, does he speak, does he save, succour, prevail? Maybe. But he creates. He creates everything and anything.”

Ending

When we listen attentively to what God is speaking to us -- you just never know what might happen. It's an amazing and a wondrous journey. And in the end we will be able to look back and recognize that God's hand has been in all of it.

Give us grace to receive thankfully the fruits of his redeeming work, and to follow daily in the blessed steps of Jesus most holy life.

Amen.

---

1. https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/12/opinions/priest-conversion-lgbt-rights-coren/index.html↩

My other Blogs

St. Paul's, Monroe, NC 

In 2021 and 2022 I was an interim at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Monroe, NC. For that ministry I wrote some regular essays intended to be general formation pieces for the congregation. These can be found at:

General Religion - Church essays

Some earlier writings

Here are a few miscellaneous pieces, including a couple of personal items. I'm at an age now where I am not looking to keep very many things private; so if any are interested, you're welcome to read.

Earlier writings and sermons

Proper 10A, St. Alfred's

 

Proper 10
July 15/16, 2023
St. Alfred's Episcopal Church

Teaching

Revised Common Lectionary

I offer you today a sermon on ears. Or rather using our ears to listen, to really hear.

It may be that I am hypersensitive to having ears to hear. When I got my hearing aids in 2011, and I could hear the birds singing in the morning, my life shifted, it changed.

It is a common criticism one hears (particularly from various Protestant denominations) that Episcopalians don't really take scripture seriously.

As an illustration to argue against that perception, I put before you today's readings from the Bible.

Since June 11th we've been hearing from the book of Genesis. In particular we have been hearing from the story of Abraham. Each week we have heard a small part of a much larger story.

For a psalm today, we have heard one small part of a much larger psalm -- in fact the longest psalm among the 150 we have in the Bible. It focuses on praise and exaltation of the Torah, the word of Yahweh, the directions from God on living a life worth living.

For the reading from the New Testament we hear the continuation of a portion of Paul's letter to the Romans. We began that series of readings on June 11 -- the same as for the reading from Genesis.

That day in June we also began a consecutive series of readings from the Gospel of Matthew. We started with chapter 9, with the calling of disciples. We have listened to various vignettes from Jesus' ministry with those disciples. There have been healings and teachings. Today we are in chapter 13, a parable with an explanation of the parable.

I want to give a bit of teaching about the Revised Common Lectionary that we use to tell us what lessons to use on Sunday morning.

How do we get such a massive dose of Scripture? What's it all about?

It all started in the 1960's with a broad movement in liturgical churches to get more serious about listening to scripture. Instead of having one set of readings for each day of the church year, the readings were spread out over 3 years. Exposing us to 3 times the amount of scripture we had formerly known -- e.g. in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer.

The readings from the Old Testament were generally chosen to reflect the theme of what was read in the Gospel of the day, sometimes for the broader theme of the particular Sunday.

This arrangement is reflected in the Book of Common Prayer found in the pews in front of you.

Basic principles

Beginning in the 1980's, there was a growing awareness that there was a weakness in the basic structure. The choice of Old Testament reading was dependent on the New Testament.

What that meant was that the Old Testament was not allowed to speak on its own terms. It was dependent on and derivative from the New Testament.

A revision was made to allow the OT to speak on its own. It would be read "in course" over many weeks in the same way that passages from the New Testament and the Gospels were read.

Such a method for reading would allow the different parts of the Bible to speak in their own voice, with their own themes and patterns.

Adjustments to this scheme were made for special times and seasons such as Advent/Christmas, Lent/Easter. Also some smaller adjustments were made in the selections to allow women's voices and experiences to come more to the forefront.

The revised form of the lectionary is not reflected in the Book of Common Prayer in the pews -- although it would be there if you bought a new prayer book today.

OT is distinctive

The reason I think that the revised lectionary is so important is because of the first readings.

There are several things that are particularly distinctive about what Christians call the "Old Testament". Jews call that book "The Bible". It is their scripture, their sacred text.

It is the only "sacred Text" that I am aware of that is scripture for 2 different religions.

We're not as different as the experiences of the past 2,000 years would suggest.

Why the teaching?

The Hebrew Scriptures

-- many people refer to the Old Testament that way in order to reflect that it doesn't belong exclusively to Christianity -- the Hebrew Scriptures are also held in high regard by Muslims. It's just that it is not divinely revealed the way the Qu'ran is.

There are 3 religions that each look to Abraham as their "Father". He is the first of the Patriarchs.

I believe that events of the 20th century have pushed a reckoning over the relationship of these religions. And thus, also, a change in the way we read and hear the Hebrew Scriptures.

It's time to listen with different ears. So let us listen, however briefly, to the book of Genesis.

Listening to Genesis

Turning to Genesis in particular, the source of today's reading, it is made up of 2 great sagas, or family stories: that of Abraham and that of his great-grandson Joseph.

Of course, you are aware that the book literally begins with creation -- thus the title "Genesis". But the real beginning is at chapter 12. We began reading that on June 11. We will continue into September, adding Exodus until October.

The underlying point of it all is the relationship of our forebears with the One God, creator of everything.

Even though the book of Genesis doesn't start with Abraham, that's where the family story begins. God sends Abraham away from his familiar home to a new land.

Abraham is the father of humanity's relationship with God.

There is humanity. And there is God. And we are called into relationship with God and with one another.

One of the things it means is that humanity is not divided up into different religions, or even different cultures or races.

These stories in Genesis tell us that -- among other things.

Elie Wiesel said that "God made man because he loves stories."

There is another ancient Jewish story about the rabbi and the student who asked about creation. "Why did God make all humans out of just one man?" The rabbi replied that God made all humans from one man so that no one could ever say, "My father is better than your father."

To listen with new ears means taking that seriously.

Listening to Paul with new ears

Turning to the New Testament reading, we hear an excerpt from Paul's longer and complex treatise known as the letter to the Romans.

Translation

I have found that I often need to listen to Paul's writings in different translations. There have been so many theologians over the course of so many centuries who have interpreted Paul for the church that I find it challenging to hear the voice of Paul himself.

One of the most recent translations that is authorized by the Episcopal Church for use in our liturgies is the Common English Bible.

Living by the Power of God's Spirit is how the CEB titles today's reading. The last part reads:

⁹ You are no longer ruled by your desires, but by God's Spirit, who lives in you. People who don't have the Spirit of Christ in them don't belong to him. ¹⁰ But Christ lives in you. So you are alive because God has accepted you, even though your bodies must die because of your sins. ¹¹ Yet God raised Jesus to life! God's Spirit now lives in you, and he will raise you to life by his Spirit.

Paul consistently gives us a word of freedom

All too often I have heard the theologians speak in a voice of "Do this!" "Do that!"

I continually try to hear with new ears.

Be invigorating. Be life-giving. Be full of the Spirit. That's what Paul's specifically talking about in today's reading. Showing us that through Christ there is life not death.

The Holy Spirit, within us, Christ living in us, ... now. That brings life to us where once there were selfish desires, living only for ourselves. That's worth hearing.

Listening to the Gospel with new ears.

Let us turn lastly to the reading from the Gospel according to Matthew. The parable of the sower.

Parable as conversion

I for one can see all too clearly that there are many around us, throughout the world, whose "minds are ruled by (their) desires." The Gospel gives us a remedy for that.

"If you have ears to hear -- then use them, listen, hear.

My most important lesson about parables came from a student many years ago, when I was trying to teach a class about parables. The student said something like "parable" sounds like "parabola". Stories and Math equations. How can they be related? It turns out they are related -- at least for me.

That it resonates as much as it does may in part because I am married to a mathematician. And I may have to insert here a little teaching. It would be better if I had a chalk and blackboard.

Consider a simple formula for a parabola: x=y².

Mathematical equations can sometimes be graphed. (mime this part)

• x / y axis
• a simple equation for a parabola would be
• x=y^{2 1}

Parables and parabolas are about blissfully going down the road in one direction, and then abruptly changing direction.

Many have written in the last century or so in a new way about parables. Matthew the gospel writer reflects in today's readings the old way we were accustomed to listening to parables.

You would tell a story and then you would ask, "What does it mean?" Ideally there would be a nice clean explanation of meaning. That's what we get in the gospel passage today.

But what if that's not why Jesus taught in parables? What if the reason he taught in parables was that he wanted his hearers to change their lives?

My own sense is that that's why we tell stories generally and why Jesus told them in particular.

Stories have the power to change lives.

Stories can cause us to change the direction of our life. A change of heart. An insight that moves to a decision.

A story can provide hospitality or healing to those in need or they can feed those who are hungry. Stories can point the way to a life of integrity and courage.

A theologian of the last century told a story. It was aimed at leading the hearer to a reformed and remade relationship with God.

Once upon a time there was a king who loved a humble maiden.

The king was like no other king. Every statesman trembled before his power. No one dared breathe a word against him, for he had the strength to crush all opponents. And yet this mighty king was melted by love for a humble maiden.

How could he declare his love for her? In an odd sort of way, his very kingliness tied his hands. If he brought her to the palace and crowned her head with jewels and clothed her body in royal robes, she would surely not resist—no one dared resist him. But would she love him?

She would say she loved him, of course, but would she truly? Or would she live with him in fear, nursing a private grief for the life she had left behind. Would she be happy at his side? How could he know?

If he rode to her forest cottage in his royal carriage, with an armed escort waving bright banners, that too would overwhelm her. He did not want a cringing subject. He wanted a lover, an equal. He wanted her to forget that he was a king and she a humble maiden and to let shared love cross over the gulf between them.

“For it is only in love that the unequal can be made equal,” concluded Kierkegaard. The king, convinced he could not elevate the maiden without crushing her freedom, resolved to descend. He clothed himself as a beggar and approached her cottage incognito, with a worn cloak fluttering loosely about him. It was no mere disguise, but a new identity he took on. He renounced the throne to win her hand. ²

For me, the lessons from scripture today are about listening with new ears, hearing so that our lives are changed -- if even in one small way. Of such things is the world itself transformed.

---

1. https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2020/07/10/the-parables-of-christ-are-not-secret-codes-but-calls-to-conversion/↩

2. Link as quoted in Soren Kierkegaard's Disappointment with God. Various notes, including S.K.'s own elaboration in Philosophical Fragments - with a long quote from Phil. Frag.↩

Easter 5: May 6/7, 2023

 

Easter 5

St. Alfred's
May 6 & 7, 2023

Opening

Getting lost

Philip is feeling lost and wants to know the way to go. "Show me", he says, "Show me the way we should go."

We were away for a couple of weeks in April. Our son was getting married up in South Carolina, and we took some time to visit with friends in the Carolinas and in Atlanta.

The last one of those visits was scheduled to be lunch at a restaurant in a suburb of Atlanta. As soon as I drove up I knew that this was a popular place. There was not a parking place in sight. After driving around a couple of times, I dropped Mary Pat off at the door and headed back out to search out a parking space.

After a few minutes she emailed the information posted at the door that there was free public parking across the street. I headed into it. It was below ground parking, so I headed down one level, then another, then I followed the signs for available spaces. I went around and over. I went down one direction and then turned in another, following the signs. This went on for 5 minutes or more before I found a place to park.

It was clear to me that I was a long ways from where I entered. I took a picture and walked up the stairs. When I emerged above ground there was nothing that looked familiar. I had no clue where the restaurant was.

Actually if I hadn't had the GPS on my phone I might still be wandering that neighborhood. As it was, there was no direct route back to where I started, and I thought, "It's not going to be easy finding my way back to the car."

But I went on to have a most delicious meal and conversation with our friends.

Being found

Then it was time to find the car. I told Mary Pat it's going to be a while and that she should wait at the restaurant. I headed out, knowing that I wouldn't be able to retrace the steps I had taken from the car. I decided I was going to sniff out the way, using intuition and little bits and pieces of things I remembered from the original walk.

Although it was a considerable walk, I made my way pretty directly -- by a way different from the original. I felt like I was being divinely directed. I felt like quite beyond my own abilities I had been found.

I imagine that "I can find my way back." That somehow the challenge is my ingenuity and perceptivity. But I'm also aware that being lost is precisely, "I can't do it."

I am the way, the truth, and the life

Searching for the way

I frequently hear conversations where one person is quite certain about Eternal truth, that they know the way -- to something or other -- even the best restaurant.

I realized that when I hear someone declare that they know the way, it's a clear indication to me that they probably don't. Maybe they're on their way to knowing, but to be certain is to have got their prematurely.

I had a personal insight in just the last year -- funny that it takes so long to figure out the simplest things -- I realized that it seems to be part of the human condition that we all seem inclined to think that we're right -- about whatever.

I saw a number of billboards on the way home from Atlanta, saying things like, "Jesus is the only way to eternal life." "Jesus, the only way." Some of them quoted directly from John 14:6 (as we hear from today's gospel reading.)

I don't dispute the claim, but what I have trouble with is the narrowness of the intention. My own experience leaves me thinking that the way, the truth, and the life, as it is identified with Jesus, is the broadest hugest thing there is.

The path of discipleship is a journey -- not a thing.

Again and again I've thought of the story I heard once about a little girl who got lost while wandering in the forest. The father began looking for her and relentlessly pursued her through the night. As dawn appeared he came upon a clearing and saw his daughter huddled beneath a large tree. He called her name and she jumped up, shouting, "Daddy, I found you."

Like that little girl, the way of discipleship that Jesus is clearly calling us to, is something of an adventure story. We get lost -- then found -- again and again and again.

It's a journey. It's a pilgrimage. Back to the Father through Jesus.

Metaphor

When Jesus identifies himself with the "way, the truth, and the life" he is not talking literally. It's not like walking back to my car, Jesus says, "Here I'll show you the way."

There is scarcely any passage in the entire Bible that is more obviously metaphorical than what we have heard today. It is to miss the point if we take it literally.

Jesus says: I am the way, the truth, the life.

In this passage Jesus is not telling the disciples all the ways they are not supposed to go. He is shining a light on their path. Their quest for what is true is a path of finding what is lasting and not ephemeral. It takes a lifetime to discover that.

Who is it who said, "What is truth?" in the Bible? Pontius Pilate, of course. Our call to discipleship is to follow what is true and lasting. To seek the Truth. None of us, however, is in possession of Truth -- except the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

In these words Jesus is not telling the disciples what church to go to. He is inviting them on the journey he has traveled before them.

The way to the father

Jesus as the way

The Gospel of John talks about Jesus as being so intimate with the Father they are as one. Jesus knows the Father in an intimate and familiar way. see this on Jesus's identification with the Father.

Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” He is seeking the way.

Ever since I heard a sermon on this passage from John, I have been haunted by Philip's words.

Show us the way. The sermon has haunted me, because I was persuaded by the preacher that there are consequences to my having said, "Yes" to being a disciple of Jesus.

One of the consequences is that God has made me in part responsible for God's reputation. People will look to me with something of Philip's question, "Show me the Father." "Show me Jesus, he knows the way."

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:30 (Another one of those deeply metaphorical statements of Jesus.)

Whoa! That's heavy prospect.

But at least one of the ways the burden is made lighter -- is that we are not alone.

Royal priesthood

Royal priesthood

I've often thought about the notion I first heard from Pete Seeger. He said that it's the company you keep on the journey that's most important. It's not just the final destination, or as another singer put it, "It's got to be the getting there that's good."

The wonderful thing about this journey or pilgrimage we are on is the wonder of the folks we get to travel with. The company we keep on the pilgrimage of following Jesus is, as the reader puts it today, a Royal Priesthood.

a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people,
but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy,
but now you have received mercy. --1 Peter 2:9-10

We are colorful passionate group of pilgrims seeking the way of doing what Jesus did. Why? Because that's how we show the way to the Father for all the people we meet.

There's not some special privilege involved in this "Royal Priesthood." It is love. It is compassion. It is caring for one another. It is not privilege. It is not first in line. The first shall be last, the last shall be first.

It is the way, the truth, and the life.

Maundy Thursday, April 6, 2023 -- St. Alfred's, Palm Harbor, FL

 

Maundy Thursday Sermon -- 2023

At the opening of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, he says > Jews ask for signs, and Greeks look for wisdom, ²³ but we preach Christ crucified, ¹

For Paul, everything he preached came down to "Christ crucified." That's more or less what I have to say tonight.

Where I'm coming from

When I reaffirmed my commitment to Christianity as a 20 something, I knew very little about the actual living out of being a Christian. I had read and meditated on a lot of things in college having to do with faith and spirituality generally. As my peers went off in a lot of different directions, things like:

• existentialism
• Hinduism
• agnosticism
• various sects and cults

I decided that there was enough promising material in Christianity, stuff that seemed attractive to me: things like mysticism, a commitment to service to the most vulnerable, prayerful living in community, ... that I would commit my life to that until I couldn't go any further. I'm still going after all these years.

I knew about people like Thomas Merton in the 20th c. --I had taken a class with one of Merton's colleagues at Gethsemane. I had studied Meister Eckhart from the 14th c., ostensibly in the Middle High German that he wrote in. I knew something of the thought of Thomas Aquinas. What I didn't know very much about was the actual day to day living of a Christian. I didn't know much about what goes on in church -- even though for 4 years or so I had attended an Episcopal Church every week.

In my mid 20's, I began attending a small Episcopal church out in the country. We were introduced to it by the priest who married me and my first wife. I knew him because of his research at the college library where I worked. He was a retired priest from the diocese of California. The people in the church accepted me with my hair stretching down my back. They accepted me with my questions and my uncertainties. That meant a lot.

And then I found myself anticipating the birth of my first born. And he or she was going to need to be baptized. (I knew that just from societal and cultural formation.) The priest told me that Easter was the best day to baptize folks -- the revised Prayer Book was then in its provisional status. I accepted that norm -- but unfortunately Owen was born in May -- too late for an Easter baptism. (I'll save the rest of that story for a later talk on Pentecost).

The point is that that's how things were when I first experienced the liturgies of Palm/Passion Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter. I started to process the notion that there were things that happened on Sunday morning that weren't just the same old same old.

• We did things that were dramatic: presenting the Gospel like it was a theater piece.
• We Episcopalians did things that just weren't done in ordinary society: people took their shoes off and water was splashed on them.
• Folks from the congregation carried a big cross down the aisle, and later people went up and kissed the wooden cross.

These things seemed extraordinary to me at the time. But I kind of let it go, because within a few weeks I had to name my first born child as the doctor delivering him held him up and asked me what his name was. I hadn't known he was he until that moment. I said, "Owen", feeling a little like I was Adam in the Garden of Eden, and then burst into tears -- tears that in some ways have stayed with me to the present day.

I knew that I had so much to learn I could scarcely imagine it.

Passion and Liturgy

I so often think that I know something when I don't really, or I have so often experienced it that it has become commonplace wisdom.

One of my fundamental convictions is that the ordinary way in which God communicates with human beings is by "surprising" them.

I thought I knew what Sunday worship was about; after all I had done it for so long. I didn't realize that Sunday worship was a regularly repeated celebration of Easter; since Easter was the foundation of Christian faith.

I knew what Easter was. I knew it wasn't about Easter bunnies -- although that had been a part of my family custom. It was about going to church.

What I didn't realize in my 20's, and wouldn't appreciate for a long time afterwards, is that the one thing that Christians had to proclaim is the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus. Everything else is commentary.

It seemed odd to me, many years later, after ordination, that there is only one Sunday in the church year when the Passion is read. We did that last Sunday.

I came more and more to understand that the central importance of the Passion in the life of a Christian meant that it took longer than a single sitting to even tell the story of Passion and Resurrection.

A whole week -- we call it "Holy Week" -- is set aside for the telling of the central Christian story. It gets told in sections and pieces. Then on this night in Holy Week begins the concentrated, white hot, version of telling the whole story.

We begin it with tonight, the Passion tomorrow, and then with the Vigil the Easter story is put directly into the context of the whole of creation. It's a big story. But there's a sense in which it is one story.

That was illustrated for me when in my first year as a graduate student at Notre Dame, I found that all the liturgies, from Thursday through Sunday, were published in one booklet.

The liturgy doesn't end tonight. It continues until the next chapter of our proclamation of Passion, Death, and Resurrection.

There is no dismissal after tonight's liturgy, because it isn't over. It continues. It continues in the prayer and watch which some of us will undertake over the next hours. It continues with the Good Friday liturgy, and it also has no dismissal. It continues with the first liturgy of Easter -- the Great Vigil of Easter as it is titled in the Book of Common Prayer.

Scripture tonight

One of the great misconceptions of the liturgical churches is that they somehow slight Scripture. Our worship in fact has a super-abundance of scripture. Our liturgies sometime seem to be overwhelmed with the richness and meaning of the scripture that is read. Such is the case today.

Each of the texts we have heard tonight is chosen for its vital importance to the overall meaning and significance of the day.

Exodus

Our reading from the book of Exodus comes from the extended opening of the book recounting the deliverance of the people from slavery. The primary liturgical ritual celebrating that deliverance is the Feast of Passover. Jews began the observance of Passover last night, and it lasts for 8 days.

You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.²

Countless are the Eucharists celebrated throughout the world and throughout the year where the prayer over the bread and wine culminates in the proclamation: Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.

For many years it has seemed clear to me that the only way for us to really understand the meaning of that phrase is to understand and know what that means in the context of the Torah.

We hear the divine words "Do this ..." in the reading from Exodus. We hear it in the words from Paul in the second reading. We hear it every time the Eucharist is celebrated.

Paul

In this brief passage from Paul's letter to the Corinthians, we hear the words associated with the Eucharistic Prayer. “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” He received the tradition from his elders and he is passing it on to his heirs. So it has been from the time of Moses up to the present day at St. Alfred's Church.

John

With the first two readings we hear emphasized one of the themes of this day. The Eucharist. With the passage from John what we don't hear is as loud as what we do hear. We don't hear from Matthew, Mark, or Luke who recount the same tradition that Paul had received.³

We hear from a different thread in the Tradition. From the Gospel of John. In this tradition Jesus institutes a different action. He washes the feet of his disciples. Peter objects, but Jesus overcomes his objection by saying: You ought to be washing one another's feet.

Then he adds another one of those commandments (a mandate): He says, "Do this".

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

There are not many places where Jesus says, "Do this," but we hear two of them tonight. One of my heroes, Shane Claiborne, says, "When Jesus says something like that, we probably should pay attention to it."

Another of my teachers years ago used to say over and over: "If it's true, it's important."

Tonight we are commanded to "Do this. Pay Attention. It is important.

Outside of our comfort zone

It is not easy, this, "Do this ..."

The first priest I worked for had strong views on a number of things. At one point he left me a little card on which was written, "So, you think you're important? Put your finger into a glass of water. Take it out and see what impression you make."

That same priest didn't like what was called renewal music. One such song was frequently sung in those days, "They will know we are Christians by our love." My boss decreed that in his church we would never sing that song until there was some evidence that it was true.

I learned a lot from that priest.

One of the things I learned is that to be faithful to our calling as Christians we have to move out of our comfort zone as we try to do what Jesus commanded us to do. It's not easy to "Love one another." The Eucharist is a mystery as we seek to make Christ known even as we are known.

Traditionally, the liturgy for Maundy Thursday has required that people take their shoes off and let someone (maybe a relative stranger) touch them. That's way outside the comfort zone of many people.

My priest boss taught me that it's really difficult -- unless we get outside of our comfort zone -- to take seriously the commandment to "Love one another." In the largest sense it's really about how to be Christian in the world around us. It's a job for a lifetime.

Baptismal Covenant

In tonight's liturgy, as in many of the activities in the church, actions speak louder than words. That is particularly true during this week when we are telling with words and actions the most important and vital parts of our Christian calling.

We preach Christ crucified.

We are called to be a Eucharistic People. That is to be transformed into Christ's body in the world.

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks with Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
— St. Teresa of Ávila

Which is to say that Jesus's mandates to us are a call to a life of servanthood. Who is the community we are called to love and serve? What does that look like in the practical reality we live in? Each of us has the task to figure it out for our own lives and in our own time.

One person outlined these Characteristics: this way:

1. To be more ready to listen than to give orders
2. To cultivate and use empathy in relating to others.
3. To refrain from projecting our own needs onto others.
4. To make healing a part of our everyday actions and decisions
5. To understand Stewardship as care and appreciation of the abundance that God provides, even when we seem pre-disposed to experience scarcity.
6. It is a concern for the well-being and building-up of the community, where the common good is experienced as foremost of the concerns of all.

I have for a long time thought that the 12 steps of A.A. are a powerful reflection of what we are commanded to do as Christians. The 3-step version of that is:

• I can't
• God can
• I think I'll let God do it

Closing

The next step in our liturgy tonight will be to make a sacred symbolic commitment to engage in the task of "loving one another" -- a task that can only be accomplished by the Grace of God. That grace can be seen in the anointing and blessing of our hands. So leave the building tonight, go forth as Christ's hand and feet, eyes and ears, heart of love and compassion, for the world in which we live.

Amen.

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1. CEB↩

2. Exodus 12:14↩

3. (NABRE) See note on Mk 14:22–24. The Marcan-Matthean is one of the two major New Testament traditions of the words of Jesus when instituting the Eucharist. The other (and earlier) is the Pauline-Lucan (1 Cor 11:23–25; Lk 22:19–20). Each shows the influence of Christian liturgical usage, but the Marcan-Matthean is more developed in that regard than the Pauline-Lucan. The words over the bread and cup succeed each other without the intervening meal mentioned in 1 Cor 11:25; Lk 22:20; and there is parallelism between the consecratory words (this is my body…this is my blood). Matthew follows Mark closely but with some changes.↩