Author: John Drymon

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.

I’m coming up on my fifth anniversary as Rector of Trinity Parish, and its hard for me to believe my wife Annie and I have been here half-a-decade. While the last twelve months have seemed a bit unending in some ways, the prior four years seem to have flown; I am, indeed, having fun! In any event, it got me thinking about my arrival here, and how it’s hard to remember precisely how I met each of the people that have become so much a part of our lives here.

One introduction I haven’t forgotten, because it seemed so strange at the time, was not with a parishioner but with a colleague, a brother priest in the diocese. He had come to Findlay for some non-church meeting or another, and was gracious enough to offer to meet and introduce himself. He came to my office, and immediately said, “so tell me about everything hanging on your walls.” I suppose that’s one way to learn about somebody, but I admit to feeling a bit “put-on-the-spot.” It’s a good thing I had put my own things in the office at that point, or it might have been a very brief interrogation. So, I talked about the print of St. John Vianney (patron of simple country parsons, like me) and the marble paper I got in Turkey and the Chinese Madonna and Child I picked up in Beijing and the gavel my old rotary club gave me after being their president, and at least a half-dozen other prints and paintings and objets d’art hanging on the walls. Then I came to the one thing that presumably one of my predecessors and put in the office and which I had not replaced with something of my own.

It’s a small icon which has remained in my office these five years, though this morning I have placed it at the back of the nave so you can take a look as you’re leaving this morning (though, remember Covid protocols and try not to bunch up). The icon depicts Mary Magdalene preaching to the eleven remaining Apostles, no doubt telling them the Good News of the Resurrection which she saw and believed before any of them had done. We call the Magdalene “Apostle to the Apostles” to this day for that reason.

I found this an important enough reminder for me–hence my keeping it where I can frequently see it–as a priest and as a man. The priesthood and the episcopate draw their authority from apostolic succession, that is from tracing our ordinations from a successive laying on of hands from bishops tracing their family tree, as it were, all the way back to these eleven men, chosen by Jesus. But these eleven scattered and fled at the crucifixion, and God had ordained that this woman was to preach the Good News of the Resurrection to them.

As a side note, and perhaps to be a bit provocative, I always encourage those who remain uncomfortable with the ordination of women to the priesthood (even after we’ve been doing it for 40 years), that two of the chief charisms of the priesthood–proclaiming the Gospel and mediating the mystery of Christ’s very Body–were both first undertaken by women: the former by Mary Magdalene and the latter by the Blessed Virgin Mary in a very literal way. Not to downplay the popular political slogan, having to do with sexual harassment and violence, but there is this other sense in which one may make it equally applicable to church history and theology: believe women.

In any event, we know from the other Gospel accounts that the apostles did not at first take this very good, if anachronistic, advice to heart. Luke tells us that they thought the Magdalene’s story was just “an idle tale.” At least that’s how our modern bible translations put it; the Greek is a bit stronger. They thought it was ληρος. The great Liddell & Scott lexicon translates this word as “trash, trumpery, of what is showy but useless.”

Granted, most of us would have been incredulous if given such remarkable news, no matter who was sharing it. Even so, I suspect the apostles were less open to the news because it was a woman who told them.

How often are we also deaf to good news which is being proclaimed because the teller isn’t like us? How often do we fail to recognize the Word of God, the Word of peace and justice and the Kingdom of God, because the person sharing that Word is the wrong gender or too old or too young or gay or black or poor? How often do we fail to see the Risen Christ Himself in our midst because he doesn’t look or think or act just like we expect, because he isn’t just like us?

But this is to set our minds on earthly things, not on things heavenly, for in Christ all those walls of division and distinction have been toppled. We are called to purge from our minds and souls the very human, earthly lens through which, in our fallen state, we view the world and our fellows. We think in terms of security, and Christ’s death and resurrection urge us to think in terms of sacrifice and trust. We see the world and our fellows in terms of judgment (namely, who deserves what particularly nasty punishment) and the great mystery we celebrate today urges us to see the world and our fellows in terms of grace and mercy. And, more to the point, we tend to think in terms of us and them (our people and those people) and the Resurrection should make those arbitrary distinctions disappear.

You see, through his death and glorious resurrection Christ has transcended particularity and taken on universality. Christ, the Word through whom the heavens and the earth were made, was a middle-eastern Jewish man in a particular time and place, and in his risen Body he still remains so in a factual sense. On another level, though, today Christ has become for us all in all, not bound by the categories we use to sift through and identify our fellow travelers. In a spiritual sense now Christ is no longer Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female. Christ is in us and we are in Christ, and the risen Christ is you and me and the inmate down in the county jail and the pregnant teenager and the homeless kid whose parents disowned him just because he likes boys instead of girls. That’s Jesus in our midst.

That marginal person is both the bearer of Good News and the Good News Himself. It’s through loving that person, through seeing the grace and goodness and salvific potential with which that person is brimful, that we find meaning and purpose and hope and light and life. Christ is alive. He’s right next to you. He’s right outside the doors. Serve him with gladness and singleness of heart this day and for the rest of your life.

+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.

It used to be the custom in some places to hold a preaching service on Good Friday. This was before our current Book of Common Prayer; because its predecessor (the 1928 prayerbook), while strangely providing proper Eucharistic readings for this one day of the year on which the Eucharist cannot be Celebrated, did not provide for a special liturgy of the day (like we’re now observing). So it was customary to gather in the church for about three hours and hear seven sermons, one on each of the seven last things Jesus said from the cross.

As difficult as it would be to sell a three hour church service today, I think there was some wisdom to this practice, particularly focusing on discrete phrases from the passion narrative. There is too much of eternal importance in the words we just heard from St. John’s Passion to cover in a single sermon, and I think we preachers are generally forced to focus on just a little bit (a little, discrete phrase) and let the rest of the narrative stand on its own.

And so, I want to focus very briefly on just one of these “seven last words”, and let that long Gospel reading and our rather full Good Friday liturgy stand on its own and tell the rest of the story. I mentioned this in my daily reflection video today, so some of you know that I find it to be one of the most powerful, heartbreaking images in this whole story”

When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son! Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home.

This is, in fact, the last of Jesus’ seven sayings from the Cross directed at particular people, and one of only two such sayings (the other being Our Lord’s comfortable words to the criminal hanging beside him in Luke’s Gospel: Verily I say unto thee, to day shalt thou be with me in Paradise!). Everything else he says from the Cross is either directed to the Father or else to nobody in particular. I think that this is significant, because I believe that these words can be understood on at least two levels.

First, there is the literal, though nonetheless powerful level of meaning. Jesus of Nazareth was a man, a man in tremendous pain who had been suffering a great trial since well before he was nailed onto that ancient implement of torture. Let us turn our focus briefly from the foot of the cross to the upper room the night before.

In the words Jesus spoke to his disciples that night we can detect the pain of impending loss. Our Lord was not fearful of the physical torture he would no doubt endure, but he was clearly troubled for the sake of his disciples. He senses their fear, the great angst each of them feels about their Master’s impending death, saying “Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions.”

He confides to his disciples the fear he feels that they might fall away from the faith once he has left them. He calls them “little children” for the first time, which is neither a term of derogation nor of condescension, but of sincere love for those whom he loves as one would a son or daughter, with the sort of love that cannot bear to consider that child going through an instant of pain, much less the kind of death most of the disciples would endure.

And, to my mind, most hear-wrenchingly, he says “Henceforth I call you not servants…but I have called you friends.” How often do we have one so much our better express such an intimate and loving statement and truly mean it? These men had followed our Lord for three years, and here, finally, just as they are about to lose him, the depth of the love he has for them is made explicit.

And then we return to the Cross, and behold the disciple whom Jesus loved most of all, and the Blessed Mother from whom he could never refuse a request, so great was his love for her. These two whom Jesus loved so much he gives to each other. Such tenderness of feeling our Lord and God is able to muster in the midst of suffering greater than any of us could imagine! Such warmth and gentleness to sinful man, for whose grievous sins he is at that very moment dying!

You see, while on one level he is caring for the welfare of a man named John and a woman named Mary, he is on another level saying the same thing to us. He gives us into each other’s care, and in an even greater gift, he asks us to behold our Mother the Church, to care for her and to be cared for by her. As He was giving us the gift of forgiveness, suffering on our account, he could have decided that the Grace of forgiveness was enough. Instead, even as we were crucifying him, he gives us yet another gift of Grace. He gives us a Mother.

In a few moments we will pray again the ancient solemn collects of Good Friday, and we will conclude those prayers by praying for this Mother we have been given. We will pray that the whole world may see that “wonderful and sacred mystery” which enables us to love one another in a new and powerful way. We will pray that the whole world may see her power to be God’s vehicle for Grace, to raise up that which has been cast down and to renew this old sin-sick world. May we, who are the Church, see the potential Christ has given us to love those who spurn us and to be gracious to those who don’t even know the meaning of Grace. May we be given the opportunity to die to self for the sake of a hostile world, knowing that Christ is still reigning from his tree and through him the Father’s love will be made known perfectly and ubiquitously and eternally.

+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.

When we modern people talk about love, we more often than not speak of it as an emotion: tingly feelings and butterflies in the stomach and so forth. You’ve seen the movies with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan and the rest. There’s nothing wrong with this sort of love, but if the raw feeling is the end of it, such love is ultimately ineffectual.

Thus the words of tonight’s Gospel go well beyond mere sentiment:

Having loved his own which were in the world, [Jesus] loved them unto to the end.

John is not telling us that Our Lord had warm fuzzies for his disciples, but rather that he was prepared to take actions, very specific actions dictated by the law of love.

Christ’s call to “humble service” has become a cliché in the church, and his example has come to be seen as less radical and (indeed) less distressing as it must have been for the disciples that night at Supper. Christ’s example of love is not merely encouragement to work hard for others without regard for recognition. Neither is it a model of ordinary hospitality. No, that is but the patina of easy respectability in which we’ve encased our Lord, for the true meaning of his example is too hard for us.

In washing his disciples’ feet, which in an ordinary non-pandemic year we would reënact this night, Christ is not simply doing a mildly unpleasant task without complaint. Mere hospitality would have dictated that a host provide water for his guest to wash his own feet, or a slave to help if he had one. That would be “humble service” enough. Jesus was not just being hospitable. Rather, he profoundly humiliated himself, he chose debasement-disgrace-by carrying out a task which in his culture was relegated to only the lowliest of slaves.

This would have been shocking to the disciples, as we might discern from Peter’s reaction. It should be shocking to us, and not a little discomforting, for Christ’s mandate, his “Maundy” to us is clear:

For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.

We, too, it seems, are supposed to choose humiliation, to choose lowliness.

The law of love commands not that we simply set the good of others above our own in some vague, but ultimately comfortable way. Rather, we are to be open to the humiliation of Christ himself, to ourselves become fools for Christ, to ourselves take on the form of a slave, for as Saint Paul says:

God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are.

This is an unpopular position in our culture which is sometimes overly concerned with affirmation; I have sometimes called it the Stuart Smalley culture in which “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.” But, at least in my case, low self-esteem is not the problem. For me, the problem is the opposite, and Christ’s example convicts me, as perhaps it does you. Christ’s example convicts me to actually love the family of which I am the spiritual Father by sacrificing myself for it. I’m not good at that. I’m not good at truly keeping my priestly vows as I ought, but thank God that I get reminded to recommit myself to the sacrifice inherent in my vocation from time to time, and this night especially, on which the greatest privilege I have–the celebration of the mystery of Christ’s Body and Blood–is so clearly coupled with Christ’s example of humility.

Later in his long discourse at the Supper Table, Jesus gets to the heart of what washing his disciples’ feet implies for us: “Greater love hath no man than this [he said], that a man lay down his life for his friends.” By the humiliation of washing the disciple’s feet Jesus lays down his life figuratively; by his death on the Cross for our salvation the next day he does so literally.

A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

Christ, having laid down his life for us has made us his friends, and our mandate is to lay down our lives for others. Perhaps we’ll none of us be called to do so literally, but we shall all have the opportunity to lay down our lives in some sense. Love implies sacrifice; if there’s no sacrifice it’s just warm feelings, not love. May we then all be ready to lay down our lives, in whatever way we may be called to do so, for Christ and for those whom he himself died to save. For it is only in dying to ourselves and abiding in love that we may experience the risen life in him.

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