Author: John Drymon

+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.

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

A few years ago, while lamenting the lack in biblical literacy in the culture and in the church, our then presiding bishop, Michael Curry, said that a good start might be for everybody to be able to identify and quote their favorite bible verse. “But,” he quickly added, “you don’t get to choose ‘Jesus wept.’” Famously the shortest verse in at least the Authorized or “King James” Version of the bible. While the good bishop rightly identified this as a potential way to cheat on the assignment, these two words do present a lot to think about. We see Jesus’ humanity on full display, which is a good correction to those of us who tend to focus on his divinity to the former’s exclusion. (The opposite error might be more common these days, but I for one am more prone to downplaying the weakness and fragility Christ chose to take on for us and center my own thoughts on his perfection and godhood.) There is also a pastoral element here. If even the Lord of life who knows that death is temporary (and in this case, very temporary) grieves the death of a friend, then it seems clear that our own sorrow at loss will not by itself be reckoned a lack of faith.

But a prior question occurred to me for the first time ever this week. What is Jesus weeping about. We assume it’s because his friend is dead. Could it not also be because despite spending three years teaching and performing miracles, so many still haven’t got the message. Certainly the crowd of bystanders questioning either his power or motives don’t “get it.” “Could not this man… have caused that even this man should not die?” But Mary and Martha, too, who seem almost to accuse Christ of absenteeism and St. Thomas, whose gloomy fatalism assumes the worst possible scenario—“Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

So are Jesus’ tears for Lazarus or for his unbelieving generation? I can’t say for sure, but I’d propose this “why not both?” Grief can be complex. I am not suggesting that Christ suffered from Prolonged Grief Disorder according to the definition of the DSM-V. I wouldn’t be qualified to say that, and anyway, I’m not comfortable with the other questions that would raise. I am saying, however, that Christ is nearing his final test, the crucifixion, and I am comfortable saying that “when it rains it pours” as one approaches a spiritual turning point.

Perhaps the adversary redoubles his efforts when one is walking the right path, and the most proper path ever trod was the way of the cross, on which Christ begins the final phase of his journey immediately after raising Lazarus. We didn’t hear the rest of the eleventh chapter of John this morning (understandably, since it was already a pretty long Gospel reading), but it was this miracle which led directly to the chief priests and pharisees under the leadership of Caiaphas to hatch the plot to have Jesus killed. I suspect Jesus knew that raising Lazarus would be the straw that broke the camel’s back, as it were, the act that would seal his fate. Maybe Christ’s real last temptation (with apologies to Nikos Kazantzakis and Martin Scorsese) was whether or not he should raise Lazarus, and this is why Jesus is “groaning within himself” on the way to the tomb. If so, he triumphed once again.

Last week, in reference to the healing of the man blind from birth, I warned against seeing the beneficiaries of Christ’s miracles as mere object lessons, as only means of Christ making a point. They are that, too, though. Jesus healed the blind man because he had compassion and he raised Lazarus because he loved him and his sisters. But he meant these signs to point beyond themselves as well. He says as much about giving the blind man his sight, and the symbolic implication is unavoidable here. Jesus loved Lazarus and he is Lord over life and death. This makes clear to those given eyes to see (as I pray we have been given) that in order to live we must die, just as Christ did.

One of the books I read while on retreat week before last was St. Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle. It’s not the first time I read it, but it’s one of those books that, for me at least, one can only appreciate when one is ready for it. (There are lots of books like that in my experience that I either read or started to read as a young adult, but didn’t really “get” until picking it up again after a decade or two of life.) As for The Interior Castle, fully appreciating it required me to combine my scrupulous religious adherence (which I’ve always had) with a genuine desire for spiritual growth (which honestly took a lot longer to take hold). Anyway, Teresa outlines the journey one may take into one’s own soul, proceeding through seven sets of mansions, the seventh and most interior being where Christ himself dwells.

The first time I read the book, my immediate thought was “if this is what spiritual progress looks like, who the heck would want it!?” It’s a way beset by disquiet and temptation; the further one delves into one’s soul in search of God’s dwelling place, the more one experiences periods of discomfort with worldly things, even coming to despise that which once gave pleasure. There is consolation along the road, but that road is still the way of the cross, beset by dangers both external and internal.

But rereading Teresa after twenty years of life experience, I now see its wisdom. Would that honesty were a more popular evangelistic method. Interested in dying to yourself by means of a lifelong process of conversion that won’t always be comfortable? Consider Christianity! We find appealing the prospect of a heart strangely warmed, but what of the weeping and groaning that may well precede the breakthrough?

Our greatest consolation, I think, is that Christ himself—fully divine yet sometimes to my easily-scandalized heart, all-too-human—experienced just such a process. He was not converted, of course, but in growing in favor with God he lost the favor of man, and triumphed over every temptation to take an easier, softer way.

As Christ turns to Jerusalem this week, so do we. The old lectionary called today “Passion Sunday.” (I was delighted to see that “throw back” on the hymn board this morning, caused I think, by the fact that the particular calendars I order every year slip in some old, high-church stuff that liturgical renewal tried to suppress during the second half of the last century.) In all events, the Gospel we have now for this Sunday, the raising of Lazarus, is just as appropriate as the old Gospel reading (detailing a turning point in the persecution of Jesus) as a reflection on the Passion, since this too, as I’ve suggested, is a turning point which leads directly to Calvary.

In all events, let us turn ourselves now to the contemplation of those mighty acts whereby Christ saved us and the whole world. Let us enter into Christ’s sorrow, just as he entered fully into ours. That road is perilous to body and soul, but traveling it with integrity and determination and courage and faith is the only way to find its end, which is life and peace.

+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.

One of the problems faced by theologically inclined people like me is that there is always a danger of over-theologizing leading to inaction. This is not to say that theological reflection is not a worthy endeavor in itself , but rather that sometimes other methods are, perhaps counter-intuitively, more direct routes to truth.

Take that age-old problem that we call theodicy- the problem of evil. Why do bad things happen to good people? We can spend a lifetime sitting and thinking about how to explain evil and never come to any satisfying conclusion. Indeed, some have done so, and some have even lost their faith in the process.

Or we could set out to bring some comfort to the afflicted, to help the orphan and the widow and the beggar in what small ways we can and eventually come to some satisfying conclusion, not in the form of a theological axiom which one can publish and give lectures about, but in knowing that while evil exists and is hard to explain, one has nonetheless both experienced God’s grace and has done a little, Christ being our helper, to weaken its hold over the most vulnerable.

We see these two approaches in this morning’s Gospel, and at least in the instance of the man born blind, theological speculation was not Jesus’ preferred approach. Here is a man who is in tremendous need, a blind person in those days almost invariably being condemned to a life of panhandling, no other profession being open to one so disabled. And how do the disciples respond? They see the encounter as an opportunity for theological reflection. “Master,” they ask, “who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” There is, of course, in their question a false assumption, namely that misfortune is directly linked to some specific trespass. I have mentioned before from this pulpit something called a deuteronomic view of history, which is the commonly held belief that such a simple connection exists between sin and hardship (or, for that matter, between righteousness and good fortune). We need not revisit this view in great depth again today, except to say that Jesus seems to reject it, but not in the manner we might expect.

Jesus does not take the time to respond to the disciples by presenting an alternative philosophical system; he does not (at least on this occasion) unveil a new definition of weal and woe, offering details of their nature and various causes. Rather, he quickly dismisses the suggestion that somebody’s sin caused the man’s blindness, and then says that there’s work to be done, that this is an opportunity for God’s power over evil to be displayed. He moves quickly from reflection to action. “I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day;” he says, “the night cometh, when no man can work.”

Now, I’m not saying that good old theological reflection of the sort where one sits down surrounded by dusty books producing weighty texts about theodicy and other theological problems is bad or unnecessary. We’d be as blind as the Pharisees if men and women had not done and did not continue that work, and the Church would be sorely lacking if everyone adopted an unreflective sort of faith. You see, it’s teaching—doctrine—which produces and permits conviction, and without convictions our efforts are meaningless. In this sense, theological reflection has to precede action if said action is to rise to the status of Christian charity.

What I am saying, though, is that Christian discipleship is as much a matter of the heart as it is a matter of the head, and when the latter crowds out the former our theology can be unmasked as no sort of theology we’d want to publish. Imagine if the disciples had received the kind of answer they presumably wanted from Jesus: a sustained reflection on the problem of evil complete with definitions of terms, Old Testament references, and a few clever bons mots to keep their attention. It would probably be good reading; and the theological dilletante in me wishes this were what happened but the man would have remained blind, and Christ would have been seen as being more interested in theological discourse than in showing the power of God in a tangible way.

What is even more notable here is that a faith sustained by works of charity can enlarge one’s theological perspective. The problem the Pharisees had in this morning’s reading was a dogmatism resulting from what we might consider a lack of love. If the Pharisees had loved their formerly blind brother they would have rejoiced in his being cured, and they might have been able to enlarge their view of God to encompass the work of Christ. As it happened, they cast the formerly blind man out because their small faith could not allow for that which was to them theologically problematic.

We do well, I think, to heed the warning implicit in this story. We are just as capable of falling into uncharitable dogmatism as the Pharisees and we’re just as likely as the disciples to see a suffering brother or sister as a theological conversation starter rather than seeing him as one to whom we might show mercy and loving-kindness, since God has already done so. When we choose to reach out, our own understanding of God’s love is increased. We start seeing that needy person not just as a target for our charity, but as one already gifted, whether he knows it or not, with God’s charity, as one already loved by the one who is love and in whose love we also abide. That is to say, our view of God, our theology, is made more expansive and more truthful when we walk in love, and it might sometimes be increased to an even greater degree than even the best theological reflection can accomplish.

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