Focus on the Light
Christ Episcopal Church, St. Joseph, La., Easter 7/Ascensiontide
The story of Jesus’ ascension is told near the end of Luke and at the beginning of Acts. Both accounts were thus likely written by the same person since scholars widely believe the two books have a single author.
Although there are several differences between the accounts, neither tells us when it happened. Nevertheless, the feast day for the ascension is always on a Thursday—the Thursday exactly 40 days after Easter, which is, of course, always on a Sunday.
It’s a bit odd since most churches don’t have a service Thursdays. But… of course, it must be 40 days after Easter to match the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness before he began his ministry. And why? Because that’s how the church does things, that’s why!
So… today is officially the 7th Sunday after Easter, but I prefer to think of it as the only Sunday during Ascensiontide! And since you most likely did not go to church Thursday, well, today, is our celebration of Ascensiontide, that extraordinary moment between Jesus’ departure from Earth and the coming of the Holy Spirit—to be celebrated next Sunday—Pentecost Sunday.
And it is a moment, so to speak. It is just 10 days between Jesus ascending and the Holy Spirit raining fire on the heads of Jesus’s followers. And this is the only Sunday within that 10 days, thus our main opportunity for thinking a bit about what that time must have been like for the disciples and IS like for us today.
The disciples had been on quite a roller coaster ride. Jesus had been crucified. It seemed to have all been over. Their hopes for a new kingdom were dashed. They went fishing.
Then Jesus began to appear to them. At first they weren’t sure but he kept showing up. They moved from disbelief to belief. Could it be they had him back again? They hung on his every word. This time when he said he was going away but would send this mysterious presence that would be with them always, I suspect they were readier to believe, but…, did they have any idea what to expect?
You know that I always love to look at artist renditions of the Bible stories. The vast majority of paintings of the Ascension show Jesus in voluminous robes and rising, arms outstretched. The focus is all on the glorification of Jesus. The disciples, if they appear at all, tend to be highly stylized hands and faces.
But there are a few that only show Jesus’ feet and maybe the hem of his robe dangling down from the top of the frame. In these, the focus tends to be on the disciples and their reactions, and their faces are not always calm! I saw one, in particular, that showed faces contorted by surprise, of course, but also fear and anxiety.
It is hard to be in an in-between time! What next? After all we’ve been through, what next?! Here we are alone again, and Jesus says something big is going to happen, but… what is this new thing going to be like?
It seems the disciples were kind of frozen in the moment—and wouldn’t we all be?! So the next thing that happens—and my fave thing about this story—is that two men dressed all in white appear. Angels, presumably. And they shock the poor, already stunned disciples out of their reverie.
Wake up guys, they say. What are you doing standing there with your mouths hanging open? You’ve got work to do—like “change the whole world” work to do. Better get cracking. Go back to Jerusalem and get ready.
So Ascensiontide is a little bitty—10 day, to be exact—in-between time when the disciples prayed and prepared for something to come, they were not sure exactly what or how, but they prepared in faith with prayer and praise, and lo and behold, something wondrous did happen, and they did go out and change the world.
But you have most likely noticed… you surely have noticed…the world.. still.. needs changing! Christianity brought some wonderful teachings to the world, and I’ll come back to that momentarily. But some of what Christianity brought was cruel and inhumane, and most assuredly not from God. Christianity brought the Inquisitions and the Crusades and the Doctrine of Manifest Destiny that supported our ancestors in decimating indigenous people and culture in this country.
Some Christians used passages in the bible to justify slavery. And then other Christians came along and used the Hebrew Scripture to preach that all humans are created equal and in the likeness and image of God. Christianity has always been a mixed bag and even though the disciples of Jesus changed the world… we have much to do today!
Our central teachings--love of God first and foremost then love your neighbor as self—are sorely needed in our still violent and evil world. We have a long way to go and our work cut out for us.
So we still need two men in white—or maybe any random priest or deacon—to show up every so often and say, “people of Christ Church, St. Joseph, why do you stand here gazing into heaven? You’ve got work to do! Get cracking.”
We too live in an in-between time, not a little bitty one like Ascensiontide but an enormous, ongoing one that stretches from the first Easter until that glorious day when God’s kingdom comes, fully and gloriously, and Divine Love and Perfect Unity rule everything.
What we do with our in-between time matters. What we focus on matters, as we play out our lives working toward the coming of that Kingdom. Here’s a gem I found on FB of all places, in the past couple of weeks. The author framed it as…
A reminder in these dark times…
We must call out the darkness, The unspeakable injustice and evil in this world. But we must never *focus* on it.
Make sure your focus is *always* on the Light. And remember that no matter how great the darkness gets, the Light will always be greater.
Yasmin Mogahed, Muslim woman
Our Gospel lesson today is Jesus the Christ’s prayer for his disciples, and us, as he departs this earth. It is a prayer for love and unity. But we will never achieve God’s kingdom of Love and Unity by striving for conformity and uniformity. It always sounds nice! If we could just get rid of our differences, we could all live in harmony, right? Except that what every human who ever thought that had in mind was the rest of the world conforming to THEIR beliefs, values and way of seeing! BE like me, then we can all get along, right!
Our only possible unity is in learning to live with and love in all our variation. That’s Divine Love and that’s the Light—the only Light that can guide us.
In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, AMEN.
Saturday, April 8, 2023
Do This
Maundy Thursday, Grace Episcopal Church, 2023
It’s a familiar story. Yet we need to hear it again. And again.
So we come together every Maundy Thursday to re-enact, with Jesus in our midst, two expressions of who we are as followers of him and as children of the living God.
One of those things is Holy Eucharist: Jesus calls Eucharistic community into being by blessing and sharing bread and wine with his disciples in his last meal with them on this Earth. And he says, “do this in remembrance of me.”
Those of us who take seriously our commitment in our baptismal covenant to “continue in the fellowship and the breaking of the bread and the prayers,” tend to be here at least once a week for the ongoing celebration of Holy Eucharist in this place.
The other expression of who we are as followers of Jesus that we re-enact this night is our identity as servants, initiated by Jesus’s washing of his disciples’ feet. And this time he says, ‘I’m doing this as an example of what you are to do.”
We call this night “Maundy Thursday” because “maundy,” coming from the Latin “man DAH tum,” means “command.” Jesus didn’t just express hope or desire that we do these things, he commands us to do these things.
So we participate and are renewed weekly by Holy Eucharist. But do we have an equally powerful weekly reminder of our servant identity? It is there, in our post-communion prayers, and I’ll come back to those. But do we see our Eucharistic life and our servanthood as being one and the same?
I’m not so sure, and much as I love the Book of Common Prayer that guides us through our daily and weekly liturgies, I wonder if it’s not a shortcoming that we can so easily miss that point. Certainly I think our role as servants is the harder to remember and make real with regular practice in our lives.
I dare say, coming to the holy table reassures us of our belonging and reminds us of God’s grace and mercy toward us. It is, by and large, our comfort zone.
In contrast, practicing our servanthood often takes us out of our comfort zone. And isn’t it interesting—and probably quite relevant—that the action Jesus used to drive home his point about servanthood also takes us out of our comfort zone!
I grew up in the Mennonite Church—a sharp contrast with the Episcopal Church in some ways. And I will never forget so long as I live the acute discomfort of the teenagers of the church on foot-washing Sunday. Because, you see, in the Mennonite Church, everyone had to do it. Everyone!
And so the teenage girls and the teenage boys would congregate in separate groups in opposite corners of the church, as far apart as they could get, and, rather hurriedly, heads down, wash feet.
What is up with that? Well, clearly, kneeling down and washing each other’s feet involves more vulnerability than even adults are comfortable with, much less teenagers. But that is exactly as I think Jesus intended it.
Now, please. I did not tell that story to pressure anyone into participating in the ritual of foot washing tonight! I love the Episcopal Church’s “some should, all may, none must” approach to such things.
But I do want to call each and every one of us, whether we participate by coming to the basins or by sitting in our pew watching, that we not allow this to be just another annual ritual in the church year.
I do call each of us to recognize this re-enactment to be a recommitment to our role and identity as servants, along with our brother Jesus the Christ, and along with all of the vulnerability that servanthood involves.
See, the life of servanthood is not about making us feel good. Last week at our monthly pub theology gathering, we got into a discussion about charitable acts—specifically about such things as giving money to someone who is asking for help.
Now that is by no means the only way to enact servanthood—maybe not even the best way—but it is one way. Helping people who ask us for help is one way to “seek and serve Christ” in every human face, as our baptismal covenant puts it.
But the question that came up was, what if it doesn’t make us feel good to do it? Shouldn’t doing a charitable act, doing some kind of service to another, make us feel good?
My first thought in response to the question was, yeah, that makes sense, it should.
But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I question my response. Why should it make us feel good? When did Jesus ever say that following the servanthood he modeled for us would make us feel good?
Actually, what Jesus did say pretty clearly is that following him was not going to feel good. You know, all that stuff about maybe having to leave behind family, about letting the dead bury the dead, about giving away all your stuff, about the narrow way vs. the broad way…
So maybe if doing some charitable or servant-like thing makes us feel good, we really ought to think twice about it. We ought to question our motives. Because following Jesus into the life of servanthood is not about making us feel good. It is far more likely to be about leaving our comfort zone, with God as our help—and that, of course, is what makes it possible.
Here’s what servanthood of the Jesus kind is about: Love. That is all.
Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. What Jesus did was about love. What Jesus institutes is loving service. And he says, I do this as an example of what you are to do. And when Peter objects, he says, Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.
Loving service to each other and all of humankind is intrinsic to our relationship with Jesus the Christ. Without it, we have no share with him.
It is the outward manifestation of an inward grace—that inward grace being the love of God through our relationship with Jesus the Christ. Without it, we have no share with him.
Our service in the name of Jesus the Christ is an extension of the community we share at the holy table. It is sacramental.
And now, Father, send us out to do the work you have given us to do, we will soon pray after receiving the holy food. Or, in the magnificent words of Rite I, strengthen us to do all such good works as thou hast prepared for us to walk in.
Service is not merely something we do in our spare time or with spare resources. Loving service is how we walk in the world.
In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, AMEN
Monday, April 3, 2023
Please Save Now
Palm Sunday, Christ Episcopal Church, St. Joseph, La.
It has never been clear to me why a homily is required on Palm Sunday. What can a preacher—or anyone else, for that matter—say after reading the Passion Gospel? Would that we all sit quietly and let the pain.. and the anguish.. and the despair.. of having been forsaken by God wash over us.
So I don’t have much to say, but a little that matters, it seems to me.
I always thought the word “Hosanna!” shouted by the people who waved palms and marched into Jerusalem was a joyous, triumphant “yay, God,” “long live King Jesus” kind of statement.
A few years ago, doing some research for teaching religion in the Grace Middle School, I discovered to my surprise that that’s not at all what it means. Far from being a shout of triumph, it is a plea. “Hosanna” comes from the Hebrew hoshia-nah, which means “please save now.”
In other words, the people who escorted Jesus into Jerusalem with a celebratory parade were not shouting praise, adoration or victory. They were begging to be saved already!
Perhaps then, it is no wonder that just a few days hence, after Jesus had stood silently before the chief priests and elders and refused to defend himself before Pontius Pilate, those same people called for his execution.
He had let them down. Here was a man who refused to save himself, refused to even defend himself. How could he possibly save anyone else? Jesus was a disappointment. He betrayed their hope and longing for a Messiah who would actually solve problems! Fix things! Get the Romans off their back! And so they quickly turned against him.
And are we not like that today? Do we not lay down our palm branches and pick up our weapons rather quickly when our often unrealistic expectations are not met by… whomever or whatever: a political party; a friend; a spouse; our church; a priest, bishop or deacon.
We want what we want and we want it on our terms. Even when we all really want the same thing, we disagree on the way to get there and have trouble even having civil discussions to seek some common ground.
We are very quick to drop our palm branches and pick up our weapons, fling harsh words and sarcastic memes at one another.
Jesus before the elders and before Pilate must have looked like a loser. The people wanted to hitch their wagon to a winner. And don’t we?
And don’t we want God yet today to “please save us now”! Don’t we, too, have unrealistic expectations of God’s role in human life? Why does God allow.. bad things to happen to good people? we ask. Why does God allow poverty? Why does God allow evil in the world? Why, God…? we ask, as if God were in the business of handing out political favors for those who vote for Him.
The people who waved palms that first palm Sunday were unprepared for the answer to their suffering to be Love, simply Love—humble, obedient, self-sacrificing Love that overcomes evil not by fighting back, but by embracing.
I’m not sure we’re any better prepared or accepting today of Love as the answer, Love as that which will save us, than were the people 2000 years ago. We sure don’t act like it! We’d rather dig in our heels and go for the win, regardless of the collateral damage the fight might do.
As we walk through this holy week, let us examine our own expectations of
God, each other, and perhaps most of all, ourselves. Can we accept humble, patient, unconditional Love as the thing that will save us? And if we say “yes” to that, how must it change us?
In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. AMEN.
Monday, March 27, 2023
This One Life
Grace Episcopal Church, Monroe, La., Lent 5
Five weeks ago, as I was preparing a homily for the Ash Wednesday service down at Christ Church in St. Joseph, I was inspired to go online and order a small hourglass on a chain. My theme for that homily was memento mori, “remember that you are going to die,” and my plan was to wear the hourglass pendant as a Lenten discipline.
Or, at least, that’s my excuse for not making good on my Lenten discipline!
Why an hourglass? Well, because time is running out—not just in the general sense that everyone must die, but in the particular: I’m going to die! My time is running out. Lent is about remembering that.
In today’s Gospel story, Lazarus gets something the rest of us will not get, namely more time after his hourglass had run out. Did you ever wonder what he did with it? Did you ever wonder what that multitude of dry bones did with their second chance after Ezekiel—with God’s help—prophesied them back into life?
Mary Oliver, recently deceased, is one of my favorite poets of all time. I’m going to read a poem of hers called “The Summer Day.” The last line of this poem is quite famous. You will most likely recognize it; you’ve probably heard it before. But I think the entire short poem makes the punch line even more powerful.
Here it is: “The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver
Who made the world?Who made the swan, and the black bear?Who made the grasshopper?This grasshopper, I mean—the one who has flung herself out of the grass,the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.I don't know exactly what a prayer is.I do know how to pay attention, how to fall downinto the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,which is what I have been doing all day.Tell me, what else should I have done?Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?Tell me, what is it you plan to dowith your one wild and precious life?
To be perfectly honest, I am sorely tempted to sit down and simply leave that poem hanging in the air… to give us all time to reflect on what it is we are doing with the one wild and precious life we have been given. But that would not be according to Sunday morning protocol, so…. here are a couple of my thoughts on this business of life, death and being raised from the dead.
First, life is a series of mini-deaths and mini-resurrections. It is quite literally a messy mix of deaths and resurrections, so much so that I often think of Khalil Gibran’s famous statement: Life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.
We have all experienced those times of loss or adversity or change we neither asked for nor wanted—times of loss of control, times that feel like dying. And I also know, because I know my stories and I have heard some of yours, that we have also experienced God pushing aside the stone and calling us to come out of the tomb of hurt or anger or despair we are in and back to life again.
At last Tuesday’s Lenten luncheon, it was my turn to give the meditation, and “forgiveness” was on the agenda of the booklet we are using, “Living
Well through Lent.” One of the things I pointed out, contrary to what the culture teaches us, is that forgiveness is not a “once and done” deal. It is a daily decision we must make.
Like forgiveness, resurrection is not a once-and-done deal. Forgiveness and resurrection are to be practiced, and I do believe they are connected. It seems to me that we cannot experience resurrection until we have experienced being forgiven, and forgiving… the person who wronged us, maybe ourselves for doing something stupid that got us into this current messy death-like situation, maybe just reality itself for being exactly what it is, nothing more, nothing less. And this human life will give us plenty of opportunities to practice both.. forgiveness and resurrection, of that we can be certain.
The second thing I want to say about life, death and resurrection is that, as followers of Jesus, God has a claim on us. God has a claim on our lives. With our baptism, we made decisions well in advance that necessarily shape what we do with our one wild and precious life. Not in detail, but certainly in substance and in principle.
To echo one of Fr. Don’s themes, one of those things we promise is to be in church. So, you’re here, I’m preaching to the choir, but… have you considered picking up the phone and calling someone you haven’t seen here in awhile to just remind them that “the fellowship and the breaking of the bread and the prayers” is incomplete without them!
BTW, in case you don’t know, research shows that it is umpteen times more effective for you to do that than for clergy to do it.
But to me the much harder promises come at the end of the baptismal covenant. Those would be the promises to seek and serve Christ in every other person, loving them as myself, and to seek justice and peace for all and to respect the dignity of every human being. I don’t think we do those things well at all.
So I’m a teacher. Giving grades comes naturally. I would actually give us a B on church attendance, and maybe a C on seeking and serving Christ in every person. That’s charity. We do some of that. Not enough, but some.
But that last one? Seeking justice and respecting the dignity of every person? Well, I would say D at best. Because I have heard the poor blamed for their poverty inside every church I have served or attended.. by people who haven’t the slightest idea of what systemic poverty is like or what it takes to get out of it. To respect the dignity of every human being surely requires, at minimum, hearing their story before coming to conclusions about the cause of their condition.
I give us a “D” on that last promise because seeking justice involves change. Justice is not a hand-out. Doing charity does not produce justice. At best it produces survival within the status quo. Seeking justice means looking at causes and examining systems that produce injustice. It means being willing to change, even those systems that worked well for us. And just talking about such things makes us deeply uncomfortable.
These things are in our baptismal covenant because God calls us to do them. And we agreed! We made a solemn vow that whatever else we do with this one life, we will—with God’s help—do it all within the context of God’s claim on us, guided by the Spirit, walking in the way of Jesus.
Easter Sunday is just around the corner. Our Easter liturgy is a major baptismal event. Using Lent to prepare for baptism became a tradition of the church many centuries ago. My prayer today is that we use what remains of this Lent to assess honestly, to look forward courageously, and to renew our baptismal covenant again, as if for the first time.
In the name of God, Father, son, and Holy Spirit, AMEN
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