April 26, 2020 - Easter 3A

Lectionary Readings

In the name of the Risen Jesus. Amen.

            The Bible is full of wonderful and inspiring stories, and this one that Luke presents to us this morning, often called “The Road to Emmaus,” has got to be near the top of the list. For me, what’s so grand about this story is that it’s both every day and spectacular. It includes such normal things being on a commute and eating a meal and such an extraordinary thing as encountering the Risen Jesus. It’s easy to put ourselves into this story, and so for the sermon this morning that’s what I want to do – to consider this story not from the outside, but let’s get into it and let the Holy Spirit guide our imaginations that we, too, might encounter Jesus through it.

April 19, 2020 - Easter 2A

Lectionary Readings

In the name of the Risen Lord. Amen.

            Eastertide greetings to you all. I pray that you all are continuing to be safe and sane during this difficult time. And while we can’t physically gather with one another, I am so incredibly thankful that, through our prayers and with the aid of technology, we can still gather as the faithful people of God and be connected in this way. This morning, instead of primarily focusing on one of the Scriptural texts that were read, I want to focus on a liturgical text – the Pascha nostrum, which is the Latin title for “Christ our Passover.”

April 12, 2020 - Easter Sunday

Lectionary Readings

In the name of the Risen Lord. Amen.

            Alleluia, Christ is risen! I can’t tell you all how much I miss hearing “The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!” come echoing back at me. I miss you all. I miss the sundresses and the seersucker suits, the kids hopped up sugar from Easter candy, the college students returning home, having a church full of flowers, brass instruments, and most importantly – you. This is an Easter unlike any other in Church history, as the vast majority of responsible Christians around the world are not in church this morning. And that has to be acknowledged. I won’t pretend that this Easter is normal, because I never want empty churches to be the norm. The women at the tomb experienced both fear and joy, and so we have permission to feel both of those as well. We can be afraid of the Coronavirus while still being joyful that this is Easter.

April 11, 2020 - Easter Vigil

Lectionary Readings (and Daniel 3)

In the name of God ☩ Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

            We’ve arrived at the pinnacle not only of Holy Week, not only of all liturgies of the Church, but to the very pinnacle of all Creation. As we heard in the Exsultet, “This is the night when God led the children of Israel out of slavery in Egypt… This is the night when all who believe in Christ are delivered from sin… This is the night when Christ broke the bonds of death and hell, and rose victorious from the grave… How blessed is this night, when earth and heaven are joined and humanity is reconciled to God.” This is the night. The Easter Vigil is the pinnacle of time and space because it is asynchronous with our understanding of time. By God’s sovereign grace, we are in a sacramental sort of time where God’s salvation is absolutely present to us. My role in this sermon is to serve a tour guide of sorts. Tonight’s liturgy and Scripture readings do all of the work, I merely will be pointing them out so that what becomes apparent is the legacy of God’s salvation.

April 11, 2020 - Holy Saturday

Lectionary Readings

In the name of God ☩ Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

            Holy Saturday is a day of waiting. Yesterday was the day that Jesus was crucified and tomorrow we will be the celebration of the Resurrection, but there is a day between these two major events in our salvation. Nothing happens on Holy Saturday in Scripture, so we can only guess what the disciples and faithful followers of Jesus must have been up to. As this morning’s Collect tells us, just as the crucified body of Jesus laid in the tomb, so we await the coming of the third day. We wait.

            Waiting is hard. If you’re like me, when you order something online, you watch the package through its tracking number to see where it is. Waiting to get news on how an interview or test went can be difficult. While in most situations, a few hours can fly by, but you’re stuck in an airport terminal waiting for a delayed flight, a few hours can seem a lot longer. Children, and adults, struggle to wait our turn, to wait until after dinner for a dessert, to wait to open a package that has arrived on our birthday. Waiting is hard.

            Just ask the Altar Guild about it. The church was stripped on Maundy Thursday and is bare. But Easter is coming. And even though this year we’re not going to deck the church out as fully as we normally do, we still will make it clear that Easter is the queen of all the feasts in the Church year. So there are hangings to hang, lilies to put out, and all sorts of things to put back into their place after emptying the church. And, understandably, the Altar Guild wants to get going on this and get on with their day, especially considering that the Easter Vigil begins not long from now. But before they get to work, they have to wait. On Holy Saturday, we all wait. Instead of getting the decorating done first thing, we have to wait for this liturgy to conclude. And that’s a good metaphor in our faith and in our lives. Sometimes we have to wait because that’s where holiness happens.

            Think of a seed that is buried in the ground, if it is not given enough time, it will not sprout into new life. Think of how many times in your life something amazing has happened when you didn’t plan it out that way. Think of how many distractions turned into blessings. Times of waiting can be just as productive as times of activity.

            But what do we do while we are waiting? We want to still be good stewards of our time, right? Consider the example of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus in the reading from John. What do they do? The person they had thought was the Messiah was just executed, which wasn’t a part of the plan as they imagined it. So what did they do while they waited to see what would happen? They did the next right thing. Someone they knew had died and needed a proper burial, so they gave him one.

Nicodemus, who had previously come to Jesus at night and talked to Jesus about being born again, now comes in the light of day. With his presence, he is making a statement – this man’s death was not justified. He brings with him a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about 100 pounds, which is a lot. So, for one, Nicodemus probably brought some helpers with him, or he was a very strong person. While it can be difficult to know exactly how much that great amount of burial items would be in today’s dollars, we can safely say that it was a lot of money. Think in terms of an expensive funeral today, lik a State funeral, it’s an extremely costly amount of spices.

We know very little of Joseph of Arimathea, other than he was a member of the council, a secret disciple of Jesus, and was wealthy enough to own a brand new tomb in a prime location as a garden near the holy city. Similar to Nicodemus, his actions were the next right thing for him to do, but they were costly, both in the sense that he is publically aligning himself with Jesus by giving his tomb and in the financial value of the tomb.

Both Nicodemus and Joseph are great examples of stewardship and people with wealth using that wealth in generous ways for the glory of God. I’m sure they were just as surprised as anyone on Easter morning that Jesus was risen, so it’s not as if they did these generous deeds expecting to get anything back. Rather, even when such actions made little sense, they aligned themselves with what might have been seen as a losing cause. But they did these things because that was the most faithful and loving thing that knew to do in the moment. And in doing that, Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea are great examples to us of holy waiting. When you don’t know what to you, you can always do the best thing that you can think to do.

Sometimes making a casserole or a phone call seems small, but it really makes a world of difference to someone in need. That money in your bank account that you really could spare, giving it to the church to further the work of the Gospel makes an impact far greater than you might imagine. A few kind words or a public statement of your faith in Jesus goes a long way in this world.

I see it all around St. Luke’s, even in this difficult time. Staff members who aren’t sure how to be the church in this uncharted territory have been doing what they think would be helpful – Matt, Caroline, Bonnie, Marcus, and Tracey have done their absolute best in this situation and with tremendous results, so please join me in thanking them. The Vestry has been diligent in checking on members of the parish. Some of you have offered your resources, both know-how and physical, to help us improve our live-streaming capabilities. The Altar Guild has still been faithful in preparing this church for a Holy Week unlike any other, but it’s still been a very holy week. Beth and Hunter have served as wonderful singers in helping us to sing songs to God in this strange land we find ourselves in. Many of you have offered to help those in need and have been acting generously in our community in ways that I’m not aware of. Some of you are health care workers and have other essential jobs and you’ve been hard at work, putting yourself at risk by not being at home in order to serve the public good. This is what we do while we wait – we do the next right, the next loving, the next faithful thing.

Yes, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus are Biblical models for this, and you all have been following these holy examples. Waiting is hard, but we do not wait alone. We wait with one another and we wait with Christ. It’s going to be a while longer of waiting until things start to resemble “normal” again, so we’re going to have lots of opportunities to practice waiting. As we do so, we wait together in faith, hope in love. As we wait, we will have opportunities to do our best in doing the next right thing, and though we will fall short in doing so, we have an abundance of mercy and grace from God to try again. And as we wait, the Son will indeed rise tomorrow.

April 10, 2020 - Good Friday

Lectionary Readings

In the name of God ☩ Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

            Jesus Christ is our great high priest. Simply put, seeing Jesus as our great high priest is a good way of understanding what Good Friday is all about. What exactly that means will be the focus of this sermon. As a guide for these reflections, we’ll use today’s opening Collect to guide us.

April 9, 2020 - Maundy Thursday

Lectionary Readings

In the name of God ☩ Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

            St. Paul tells us, “I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread and a cup of wine, gave thanks, and shared them, telling us that these are his Body and his Blood and that we are to do this in remembrance of him.” At the heart of the Eucharist is memory. And, of course, it must be acknowledged that because of the necessary isolation and online liturgy related to the Coronavirus that the memory of gathering in-person to break bread is all we have. This commandment of our Lord, that we “do this in remembrance of me” though is actually one that helps us in this difficult time.

April 8, 2020 - Holy Wednesday

Lectionary Readings

In the name of God ☩ Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

            Holy Week is a week of contradictions, of oxymorons, of conundrums – the beautiful cross, the saving death, the suffering Messiah. Much of Holy Week doesn’t comport with how we’ve been trained to live by our culture. Today’s Collect presents another example of how Holy Week presents us with things that are not always as they seem: “Give us grace to accept joyfully the sufferings of the present time, confident of the glory that shall be revealed.”

Joyfully accepting suffering doesn’t strike me something that we often do. Suffering is tolerated, it is muddle through, it is overcome – but joyfully accepted? That seems absurd. And that’s not the end of it. In this suffering, we are to be confident of the glory that shall be revealed through it. As if welcoming the suffering wasn’t enough, now we are told that this suffering is going to reveal glory to us? We like getting good things, like having glory be revealed to us, but it sure would be nice if the glory could come in a nice package with a bow on top instead of through suffering.

This is, of course, exactly how the Cross works. Jesus accepts his Cross out of his deep love for us all and the glory of God’s salvation comes through it. But this is not how we think it ought to be. Suffering servants aren’t featured in Hollywood blockbusters. Instead, we have superheroes with super strength, super powers, super good looks, and super technologies. Weakness is strength; submission is victory; death becomes life. Through these things that we often avoid, the things we most need are delivered. Things are not always as they seem.

There’s an absolutely amazing and Spirit-filled interview between Anderson Cooper and Stephen Colbert that you can find online. To be clear, this isn’t about what side of the political spectrum these two might fall on. Their conversation is about the human condition. It’s particularly powerful because it took place not long after Cooper’s mother had died. Colbert’s family history is one of tragedy. When he was 10, his father and his two siblings closest in age to him died in a plane crash. And so Cooper is asking for guidance on how to deal with tragedy.

Cooper chokes up as he asks Colbert about his comment that he has come to love the thing that he most wishes hadn’t happened. He then further quotes a line back to Colbert – “You said, ‘What punishments of God are not gifts;’ do you really believe that?” Colbert says, “Yes. It is a gift to exist. And with existence comes sufferings.” Colbert clarifies that while he wishes that the plane hadn’t crashed, he is grateful for the life he now has, and he can’t pick and choose which parts of his story he gets to keep. Loss gives us awareness of other people’s suffering and allows us to more fully love one another. Suffering is a part of life, and life is a gift, so, Colbert says, he’s come to see the gifts in all things. Then he adds, “And that’s the great thing in my tradition – that Christ suffers too, that God does it, too, that you really are not alone.”

That line, “What punishments of God are not gifts” is one of those “things are not as they seem” sorts of lines. It’s based on a paraphrase from JRR Tolkien. Now, yes, we need to be very clear in saying that God does not cause our suffering. This is made very clear when Jesus says, “Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” So understanding that by “punishment” we don’t mean that God is inflicting pain upon us, we can hear Tolkien’s words as helping us to find the grace in things not always being as they seem. He writes, “A divine punishment is also a divine gift, if accepted, since its object is ultimate blessing, and the supreme inventiveness of the Creator will make punishments (that is, changes of design) produce a good not otherwise to be attained.”

The idea is similar to what St. Paul says in Romans, “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God.” What Tolkien is saying that gives comfort to Colbert is that when, because of Sin and accident, things do not go in accordance with the will of God, God does not abandon us, but rather still seeks to bless us with a good that could not have otherwise been attained. This is the story of the Cross – that blessings come through Sin and Death. The Resurrection would not have been possible without the horrors of the Cross. There’s even a phrase from the early Church that speaks of the blessing of the disobedience of Adam and Eve. In an ancient Easter text, it says “O happy fault that earned for us so great, so glorious a Redeemer.” It’s what we do in celebrating the Eucharist, giving God thanks for the Passion by which we are redeemed. What punishments of God are not gifts?

While suffering and punishments are not things that we seek, they do not mean that God has forgotten us or will not continue to seek to bless us. This is how we can embrace the contradictions of Holy Week and joyfully venerate the Cross of Christ – we trust that the love of God is with us in all things, knowing that love covers a multitude of sins.

O Lord God, whose  blessed Son our Savior gave his back to the smiters and hid not his face from shame: Give us grace to take joyfully the sufferings of the present time, in full assurance of the glory that shall be revealed; through the same Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

April 7, 2020 - Holy Tuesday

Lectionary Readings

In the name of God ☩ Father, Son, Holy Ghost. Amen.

            Building on last night’s sermon about the way of the cross being none other than the way of life and peace, I want to reflect with you on what it means to “glory” in the cross, as tonight’s Collect suggests that we are to do. There’s a book about the Cross that begins by saying, “The Cross is not and cannot be loved.” The way of the Cross is not often our first instinct, normally we give ourselves over to fight or flight. The Cross though is a very different response, it is one of self-giving love that acts in steadfast obedience to the powers of Sin, Death, doubt, and fear. And so in Holy Week, we have to train ourselves to look at the Cross and see that it really is our saving grace instead of being foolishness or a stumbling block.

            That phrase, “glory in the cross,” is one that strikes me because we don’t often use “glory” as a verb. Usually, we talk about glory as something that we give, as in worship, or something that describes something truly awesome. But this Collect uses “glory” as something that we do. In researching the history of this word, I found that glory comes into English through French and can mean things like “to boast, brag, or take pride in.”

            In some ways, Christians are great at doing this. We have cross jewelry, and art, and decorations. Clergy sometimes put a cross after their signatures, so it seems that there’s no shortage or promoting the Cross, but are we glorying in the Cross? Are these crosses that we surround ourselves with about bragging about ourselves, our faith, our accomplishments, or are they about bragging about what God has done on our behalf?

            A lot of people take pride in certain identities – for example, being a fan of a particular sports team, being a proponent of a certain clothing or technology brand, being a member of a club or group, being a citizen of a country. These are not necessarily bad things, though they can become idols. This Collect, which is derived from a passage in Galatians, though would have us take pride in the Cross. Now, what we are to take pride in isn’t a symbol. That would be like a sports fan just taking pride in a team’s logo but never actually watching any of the games or understanding how the game is played. Instead, we are to take pride in what the Cross stands for, which is where we run into difficulty. As the Collect puts it, the Cross is “an instrument of shameful death;” hardly something we would normally take pride in. The Collect then goes one step further, it notes that by glorying the Cross, that we will “gladly suffer shame and loss,” which is something that we’ve been trained to avoid.

            So if the Cross is, as St. Paul puts it in tonight’s passage from 1 Corinthians, a stumbling block and foolishness, why would we want to have the Cross as something we glory in? Turning to Jesus’ words in John, we start to get a sense of what the Cross is truly all about. Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also.”

            The Cross is not at all about the glorification of violence or suffering, quite the opposite. The Cross shows us that suffering and violence are not the end of the story when it comes to the Cross. Just as that grain of wheat’s story does not end when it falls to the earth, rather it comes to bear much fruit, death is not the end of our story. And this is why we might actually want to suffer shame and loss; there is something that lies on the other side of that shame and loss because Jesus is on the other side of that shame and loss. We suffer shame meaning that the world might not think much of us if we invest our time in serving the poor and needy. We might suffer loss of income, or maybe even physical safety, if our priority is on loving others. Look at the examples that we’ve seen in the news over the past several weeks – teachers, doctors, nurses, grocery workers, delivery drivers – all suffering loss for the sake of those who rely on their essential services. They take this suffering on because they have chosen to love at all costs.

            But Jesus tells us that those who lose their life will find it again in him. Shame and loss are only bad if we think they are the end of the story. Because of the Cross of Christ, we know that God’s love does not stop at death. The Cross shows us that death is a horizon, but a horizon is only the limit of our sight. As Jesus tells us where he is, there his servants will also be, we can trust that we will be with him on both this side and the other of death. Jesus is in the eternal peace of God, and so that is where we will also be. This Good News is what liberates us to glory in the Cross, in the way of self-giving love, in the way of fruit-producing grace. We glory in the Cross because it’s the best news in the world – the news that God loves us in and through and beyond the shame and loss of Cross and into eternal life.

O God, by the passion of thy blessed Son didst make an instrument of shameful death to be unto us the means of life: Grant us so to glory in the cross of Christ, that we may gladly suffer shame and loss for the sake of thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

April 6, 2020 - Holy Monday

Lectionary Readings

In the name of God ☩ Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

            Today’s Collect is at the heart of why the Church celebrates Holy Week. And I use that word, “celebrate,” intentionally. We do more than mark or remember Holy Week, we celebrate it, even if it is not as exuberant as a birthday party. Though the focuses of Holy Week are betrayal, pain, suffering, and death, the point of Holy Week is not to forget how this story ends. We continue to celebrate the Eucharist which remains the victory feast of the Lamb and we continue to proclaim and give thanks for his saving Death and glorious Resurrection until he comes again.

            And this wonderful prayer helps us to see this reality – Jesus went not up to joy but first, he suffered pain and entered not into glory before he was crucified. This prayer does not deny that Holy Week culminates with the joy and glory of the Easter Vigil, but it does not rush ahead in getting there. Instead, we follow Jesus through Holy Week and see that the road that takes us to this victory is that of pain and a cross.

            So often we like to take the shortcuts that lead us around the tough times. Call it what you like: optimizing our situation, life-hacks, shortcuts, the easy way, the point is that we structure our lives around avoiding uncomfortable and difficult things. This Collect reminds us that, at the center of our faith, is the story of Jesus who did not go around suffering, but rather went straight through it.

            Now, why is this? The fourth-century Archbishop of Constantinople, Gregory of Nazianzus, wrote: “For that which he has not assumed he has not healed; but that which is united to his Godhead is also saved.” Jesus brings his healing grace to all things, and so it is important that within the Trinity, through the Incarnate Son, the human experiences of pain, rejection, betrayal, abandonment, suffering, and death are experienced. There is nothing that we can go through that God does not understand. And, therefore, there is nothing that we can experience that is beyond God’s healing grace.

            But more than simply bringing these human experiences to God so that they might be healed, this prayer goes further. It states that in walking the way of the cross, we might “find it to be none other than the way of life and peace.” The Cross is the way of life and peace. That seems to be completely wrong at first glance. The Cross is about death, which is the opposite of life. And the Cross is an instrument of pain used against political enemies, which is the opposite of peace. So how is that we can say that the Cross is the way of life and peace?

            I’ll turn to a phrase you’ve heard me use often because I think it so well conveys the Christian life – “The people who bear crosses are working with the grain of the universe.” Think of a piece of wood, there is a grain to it. If we work with that grain, things will be smoother. It doesn’t mean it will be perfect, sometimes there are knots in the wood, but we’re going in the direction that we’re supposed to. Grace is that Jesus has shown us how to follow him in going with the grain of love. But we are given freedom to choose to go against the grain, which causes splintering and rough edges.

            As we know, love is wonderful and is the grain of the universe, it is the way things ought to be. But love is not always easy. Love is open to pain, love is vulnerable, love does not insist on or always get its own way. Going with this grain of love will sometimes put on a collision course with the forces of Sin and Death which insist on cutting against the grain.

            Love though is the way that leads through these pains and into Resurrection life. That is the way that Jesus went, and so in following him, we walk that road into eternal life and into the peace which passes all understanding. As counterintuitive as it may be, the way of the Cross really is the way of life and peace because it is the trail that has been blazed by the Lord of life and the Prince of Peace.

            This week, with the Cross as our guide, pay attention to the unexpected things in life and in the Scriptures we hear, for that is often the path on which God works. Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

April 5, 2020 - Palm Sunday

Gospel Text

In the name of God ☩ Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

            Today, we enter into the Holy Week – that week in which remember and enter anew into the drama of our salvation that culminates at the Cross and empty tomb. As we prayed during the Liturgy of the Palms, the aim of our liturgies this week is to guide us in joyfully contemplating on the mighty and saving acts of Jesus Christ. This year, unlike every other year, most of us actually have the time to do this. No one is away on Spring Break vacation. Many people are working from home, and most of us have extra time as our commutes are now from the bedroom to the kitchen table. We always offer a robust set of liturgies in Holy Week, and I sincerely encourage you to join in worship and contemplation this week. For one, we all could use an extra dose of God’s grace in this time of the Coronavirus. And secondly, because of these new rhythms of life, we have the opportunity to participate more fully in worship this week.