Day: April 7, 2026

Alleluia, Christ is risen!

The Lord is risen indeed, alleluia!

+ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Many of you know that Annie and I love cats. We live with four of them. Our oldest, Genevieve, is seventeen and in remarkably good health, though I often wonder if she’s becoming a bit senile. I’ve had this cat four years longer than Annie and I have been married, which means that she (Genevieve) is strongly, sometimes annoyingly bonded to me, having spent four years with no other creature, human or feline, to contend with for my attention. If I’m seated in a reclined position, she will try with all the balance and dexterity at her disposal to position herself as close to my face as possible, often choosing to plant herself firmly on my throat, which is uncomfortable for me but apparently not for her. She frequently seems as if she want to be so close that she’s trying to burrow through my skin, into my body.

This is all both sweet and annoying. That’s how clinginess can be. I want to say noli me tangere, but she doesn’t know Latin, despite living with me for so many years. Nor does she have enough Greek to understand the words in this morning’s Gospel, Μἠ μου άπτου, nor whatever the Aramaic was that Jesus probably actually spoke. She doesn’t even understand the English, don’t touch me, or at least she pretends not to understand.

Should not our Lord be more tolerant of the Magdalene than I am of a cat? If you read the Gospels and rely on their witness rather than assuming that the touchy-feely Christ of the contemporary imagination must be true, you will discover that our Lord was sometimes far more irritable and acerbic than we’re comfortable with, but this seems a scandalous step too far. “You thought I was dead, and now you see I am alive, I get it, but let’s not get all clingy and emotional.”

I hope you’ve already guessed that this is not what I think is actually going on here. As much as I personally may like the idea of a Lord whose personality had a touch of waspish reserve, you can be grateful that my twisted, projection would be an idol which bears no resemblance to the risen Christ. I don’t think the best translation of the sense of Jesus’ words are found in our Revised Standard Version’s “do not hold me”, much less in the Authorized Version’s “touch me not.”

If I could propose a way of interpreting what Jesus says to Mary in light of what he says and does next and in the following days and weeks and centuries, it would be something more like this:

“You do not have to hold me so tightly as if you’re going to lose me again. You’re not going to lose me again. You will have me forever now that I am alive for ever and you will one day be alive for ever, too. First, as my most faithful friend, you have to go and tell the others. Maybe they won’t believe you at first, but they will eventually. And I need you to be the one who does this. I need you to do it because I want to honor you, because you loved me so truly and so deeply.

“You will see me again these next forty days as you see me now. And then, after I have gone again to my Father, as the gates of heaven open to me, I will not be thinking about the triumphant procession led by the angels as they lead me to my throne. I will be thinking about how I’m going to decorate the room you’ll live in for eternity, and my dear mother’s room, and sweet John’s room, and poor Peter’s room, and gloomy old Thomas’ room. You know, I have hundreds of millions of rooms to get set up. And they have to be perfect. And they will be, because I know each of their intended inhabitants just as well as I know you. Perfectly. And I love them just as I love you. Perfectly.

“And when they get there, when you get there, we’ll have all the time in the world. Then you can cling to me just as tightly as you wish for as long as you wish. In the mean time, I’ll still be with you in a new and mysterious way. Every time you gather in my name and break bread together I will be in the room with you, truly, just as truly as I am now. And every time you go into a quiet place and open the door of your soul through prayer and enter in, I will be there, too. Just as truly as I am with you now.”

You’ll forgive, I hope, my taking some creative license just then. While that might have been an exercise in imagination, I don’t think it strayed too far from the way Jesus regards us and wants to relate to us. In any event, that’s how I find he relates to me. Not in so many words, or in words at all for that matter (excepting those words some of our bibles have in red). But the sense is unmistakably there, in those wordless encounters with the Lord of the universe, who is just as identifiable in the Christian’s heart as he is in the vast expanse of the cosmos.

And in this time between our Risen Lord’s ascension and his glorious return, we have a new, beautiful paradox to accept. Now that Jesus can be simultaneously on his throne in heaven and enthroned in each and every heart, we no longer have to worry like Mary Magdalene about whether or not we’re clinging too tightly. Indeed, the more firmly and closely we hold him, the lighter our grip will be. The more we love him, the closer we hold him, the more we’ll not desire keep this love to ourselves. We’ll want to share the Good News of Jesus’ love with others and express that love in tangible ways. We’ll be made capable of sharing in the mission of the Magdalene, the Apostle to the Apostles. We’ll find in friend and stranger hearts made ready to become sisters and brothers and friends of this Christ who saved us and the world. For if the Lord has given us the will to do this, he will most assuredly also give us the grace and power to accomplish the same.

+ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

I have heard it said that “conservative churches” (whatever that means) spend too much time fussing about personal sin at the expense of recognizing collective injustice while “liberal churches” (whatever that means) spend too much time fussing about collective injustice at the expense of recognizing personal sin.

This may be true, but I have a theory that I’ve been kicking around the last few days. I wonder to what degree we as individuals, wherever we fall along any kind of ideological spectrum, just choose to feel guilty about whichever one of these is going to make us feel less shame. Maybe we let ourselves lose sleep about how we were cross with a neighbor because we can’t bear to think how we’re complicit in societal collapse in many and varied ways. Or maybe we wring our hands about how we’re contributing to environmental degradation or unjust systems or whatever and decide we have to be more politically active or conscientious in our consumption, while at the same time refuse to consider that we may in fact personally hate a brother or sister.

Of course, both of these options assume that the conscience is alive to some recognition of culpability, so at least there’s that. It would be easier to be completely amoral and self-centered and assume that all problems (individual and communal) are always someone else’s fault, but I’m assuming that this is not the case for any of you, as ethical egoists are less likely than most to go to church on a Friday night. (Though, I suppose it’s not impossible.)

In all events, I wonder if this dynamic (if I’m right about it) is at play in all that led to the crucifixion. Anyone with a personal stake (Annas, Caiaphas, Pilate, Peter) is too cowardly to act, whether that action would be to the good or the bad. They cannot seem to do anything but try to “pass the buck.” Yet their very inaction, as responsible agents, their moral cowardice, makes them culpable for collective evil. The mob, on the other hand, is perfectly happy to act. No doubt many thought “this is just demanding the rule of law” or “if I shut up or (God forbid) speak against the will of the people, what good will it do? I’m just one among hundreds.” And yet each is personally culpable; they don’t get to say “well that’s just what democracy looks like.” (Or, as I’ve been known to playfully counter my more lefty friends, “if you don’t think there’s any ethical consumption under capitalism anyway, get off my back about all the Chinese produced junk I order on Amazon.” In truth, neither their scrupulosity nor my license is morally pure.)

Now none of this is meant to be moralistic, a demand for perfection. We are each of us sometimes like a craven Judaean bureaucrat or sometimes like a foaming-mouthed member of the crowd, and some of us may play for both teams. In this fallen world, with our sinful souls, we cannot escape that under our own steam just by trying to be better. Jesus, our crucified Lord, can sometimes make us a bit better if we let him, but I for one don’t think most of us will be qualified for canonization this side of eternity, and that’s okay. The point is that we must allow Christ to convict us of all the sorts of sins by which we have contributed to his suffering, neither dissembling nor cloaking them before the face of Almighty God. Amendment of life is a wonderful thing when God works that miracle in us, but it’s not good behavior but contrition which is the sine qua non of the Christian’s successful appearance before the judgment seat of God.

It has become passé to talk about our culpability in our Lord’s death. I will never understand that. I mean, it’s explicable; we don’t like to feel bad about ourselves, and I’ve no doubt that in the generations before we started talking about self-esteem and things like that, some of the language used was unhelpful. You probably shouldn’t tell a kid that stealing a cookie from the cookie jar is equivalent to piercing our Lord’s hands with nails. That said, pendula swing in terms of both child-rearing and public morals, so this approach is an extreme outlier rather than anything like the norm these days. And prone as I am to moral superiority and spiritual pride, I know I need the reminder that my sins have in fact grieved Christ’s heart of love; that it was not just sin in a general, cosmic sense but my particular sins as well which necessitated our Lord’s supreme act of propitiation; that I, John, am part of the problem, and that Jesus chose to do for me what he chose to do for thieves and murderers and all the rest. So, what I will never understand is what the point today could possibly be for me if I didn’t know that I too am complicit in this horrible act of violence against the one person who perfectly loves me.

This is why, you may notice if you have attended Good Friday services in other Episcopal parishes, there is one element of our solemn liturgy here which is a bit different. I have for many years availed myself of the permissive rubric to use “other suitable anthems” as “appropriate devotions” during the adoration of the Cross. The first and second set of anthems we use, called “the reproaches”, are traditional but were left out of our prayerbook and other, more cheerful texts put in their place, for a couple of reasons. One is that they’re so gloomy and self-accusatory, but as I’ve already suggested, I think today of all days that’s what we may need. The other reason is the belief that without proper education and context these texts can be interpreted as antisemitic. This is certainly worth recognizing and addressing.

Sadly—to me at least—liturgical revisers almost invariably assume that no simple country priest like yours truly is going to provide any education or context whatsoever, either because we’re all too dim or all too lazy, so they just censor texts instead. So here is your education and context, and it only needs to be one sentence as it turns out. The people God is accusing in the reproaches are not the Jews; they are us.

I’ll conclude by saying something similar to what I said in my sermon last night at the risk again of being reckoned anti-intellectual. What I said last night about the finer points of Eucharistic theology, I repeat tonight about the complicated debates surrounding soteriology—the precise mechanism by which Christ’s death was salutary. We can have that conversation some other time, but not tonight, as it would strike me as almost ghoulishly irreverent. For now, I’d encourage all of us simply to meditate on that which it would be absurd to deny. We are sinners who have found ourselves in an impossible bind. Jesus died to save us from that, taking the punishment that we deserved. We are now forgiven, free to be in loving relationship with God and with all whom he has made. And the best is yet to come, but that is for tomorrow night.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

I sometimes check my old sermons to make certain I don’t repeat myself too much, and I’m glad I did earlier this week, because I nearly wrote a lot about something I covered last year—namely, why Christians should not put on Seders, Jewish ritual Passover suppers. Very briefly, then, it’s poor form for a culture to uncritically appropriate elements from another (especially if it’s the dominant culture doing the “appropriating”, and Christianity is still at least arguably nominally dominant here in the American Midwest). But more importantly, the meal Jesus and the disciples shared, while being either a Passover meal or a meal in preparation of the Passover, was not a Seder; it was not a ritualized meal such as those observed by Jews today. This is because Seders as such did not exist before the destruction of the temple nearly forty years later, and anyway the form now used is medieval rather than anything that would have been like what might have been used in the late First Century.

All that said, it is important to remember that the Last Supper took place in the context of Passover, and that all the mighty acts which our Lord did between Maundy Thursday and Easter Sunday recapitulate and transform what his Father had done for the children of Israel from their flight out of Egypt through the giving of the Law at Sinai and to the entry into the promised land. The three great days into which we have now entered are (in a sense both within and above history) the totality of the Israelites’ forty year sojourn abbreviated and perfected.

But tonight we are called to consider not the whole symphony but the first movement. You’ll hear two more of my sermons over the next three-and-a-half days, with one much better sermon, from Saint John Chrysostom, intercalated Saturday evening. So what of tonight specifically?

We have two great themes to consider, which Christ gives us in the Last Supper: the institution of the Eucharist and the New Commandment to love one another as symbolized in the washing of feet. In a few moments we will reenact the latter and its call to love through humble service, and our liturgy’s preface to the ritual, which I will then read, summarizes and contextualizes it sufficiently. Plus I’ve preached on it in previous years. So I want to briefly comment on the Sacrament.

Many of you have heard me blather on at length before in sermons and classes and casual conversation about Eucharistic theology in very technical terms: of substance and accidents; of validity in matter, minister, and intention; of transubstantiation and consubstantiation and receptionism, and memorialism. All those topics are worthy of godly conversation and I can hold forth at dinner on any of them if you want, but you may prefer to chat about things more amenable to digestion before the fast.

Tonight, simply consider how this meal is now our Passover. The Paschal lamb once sacrificed need not be bloodily sacrificed again. The violence, which comes into stark relief tomorrow night, was once for all. For flesh we have bread which does not scream before the slaughter. The doorposts of our souls are marked with the blood of the grape. Instead of huddling in the dining room eating quickly, now the door to the whole house is open and we may luxuriate in a spiritual repast.

I was struck by an image in a film I recently re-watched of (to return to that with which I began the sermon and my disclaimer notwithstanding) a Passover Seder. The film is called Uncut Gems, and I wanted to see it again because the director, Josh Safdie, recently received acclaim for his follow-up, Marty Supreme. Anyway, Uncut Gems is the most stressful movie I’ve ever seen, and even on a re-watch, knowing how it all unfolds, it was still remarkably harrowing. (This, as far as I am concerned, is a good thing—I’m not a big fan of “cozy fiction”—but your mileage may vary.) The protagonist of the movie, Howard Ratner (played by Adam Sandler in a surprisingly effective dramatic turn) is a crooked diamond dealer, adulterer, and inveterate gambler who owes money all over town and who keeps pushing his luck further and further. Safdie said that the movie is about how you can’t cheat God, and in the end that holds true for Howard Ratner. Despite being a despicable character, there is one scene which humanizes Ratner, and it takes place at the Seder. He is called on to read the section of the service which lists the plagues God visits on Egypt, and everyone spills a drop of wine onto his or her plate. He makes a little joke to his son when he gets to the final plague, the death of the firstborn, which makes it clear that for all his faults he loves his children, and this is enough to get the viewer to hope that he doesn’t get his just deserts. The spilling of the wine at each of the plagues is a reminder not to take unalloyed joy in the death of an enemy, even if they’ve held your people as slaves in Egypt for generations. It eventually makes the careful viewer interrogate his or her own reaction to the film as a whole and its ending, but I won’t spoil the details.

Take no joy in death and don’t think you can cheat God. This is good advice with almost no exception. Indeed there is only one exception. Tomorrow we join our Lady and the Beloved Disciple in sorrow at the death of our Lord, necessitated by our own sin. But at the Cross true joy is to be found, and even at the grave we now may sing a song of triumph. You cannot cheat God, but one person being God could cheat himself, not demanding all we owe him to be repaid by us. Tonight we need not pour out drops of wine, of the precious blood shed for us, because in the cup we share pure sorrow and joy are intermingled. In the new Passover sacrificed for us, we are called to keep the feast, for now it is the feast of our God’s final and total victory.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.