Sermons

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.

There is an icon which sits on my desk, right where I see it every time I look up from my paperwork or computer screen. On the left is Mary Magdalene, taking the classical pose of a teacher (left palm up, right index finger pointing). On the right are the eleven remaining apostles, after Judas had left their number, all gesturing in a way that indicates that they are being taught. This might just be projection on my part, but to me the faces of the apostles all look a bit sheepish. And the Magdalene’s expression seems to me as if she’s thinking “now c’mon you dolts. I told you so!”

That icon was one of the few things already in my office when I arrived. I don’t know to whom it originally belonged, but there’s good reason that I kept it and that I keep it in such a prominent place. As a man in a traditionally masculine role with a fair amount of authority (both objectively because of my ordination and subjectively because of what people might project, rightly or wrongly, onto me because of the clerical collar or the deep voice or the slightly greying beard or whatever), I need to listen to and take seriously what I need to hear from those seen for whatever reason as less authoritative–laypeople, the young and the elderly, and especially women.

I share all of this to explain how important it is that Jesus, before he appeared to his chosen band, decided that the moment he miraculously overcame death went to Mary Magdalene and revealed himself to her first. There has been a great deal of ink spilled in the last few decades to explain that Mary Magdalene was neither the prostitute whom Jesus forgave in Luke 7 nor the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet in John 12, that this is all an invention of Pope Gregory I in the late sixth century. I don’t know whether or not Mary Magdalene was the remarkably inappropriately behaved woman of those stories or not (neither can be proved from scripture) but I’m more than a little curious about why so many have spent so much time distancing the woman who was the apostle to the apostles had to be recast as something other than a sinner who needed saving or an innapropriately emotional woman whose excesses Jesus needed to justify to Judas. Maybe Mary Magdalene was neither the “sinful woman” nor the overly emotional woman who wiped our Lord’s feet with her tears and hair (that remains an open question) but the insistence that she could not have been either of these women strikes me as a “solution looking for a problem.”

I guess I like to think that the woman depicted in my icon lecturing the apostles loved Jesus so much because her sins were so great, because my own sins are great, and she didn’t have the benefit of being able to hide from them to the same degree that those eleven guys did, that I do. Because the news of Our Lord rising from the dead didn’t need to be glossed as far as she would have been concerned. Somebody whom she loved more than anything, because he loved her in spite of everything, was alive. There was no need for figuring out the metaphysics of it; she was ready to see him, and so she did.

So, going back to how I have a y-chromosome and all that accompanies that and I have an indelible indentation in my skull from where my bishop laid his hands on me more than a decade-and-a-half-ago, I want to see Jesus just like somebody who needs a lot more grace than I think I do can see him. And I want to be just as excited to tell others how he changed my life. I want people with all the privilege I have to be able to see in the same way that the Magdalene saw how the Resurrection means everything!

I’ll not belabor the point, because we have a brunch and an egg hunt and all sorts of obligations for those attending neither (I know), but there’s nothing in the world more important than the fact that Christ Jesus was dead as a door-nail and then he was alive again, not in some metaphorical sense, but literally. If that weren’t an honest-to-God fact you all might as well be on the golf course this morning, and I might as well be teaching high school Latin (that used to be my favorite threat before most high school Latin classes went the way of all things, so help me think of a new one…). Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and for ever lives. It doesn’t matter if you’re an “unruly woman” like Mary Magdalene or a rather boring middle-aged dude. It doesn’t matter if you’re a pillar of the community or a nobody. It doesn’t matter if you’re black or white or something else, or rich or poor or something in between, or straight or gay or something in between, or conservative or liberal or something in between, or convinced or questioning or something in between. None of that really matters in the final analysis. The only thing that really matters is that Jesus Christ was dead and now he is alive. And he would come to us, as he came to the Magdalene, if only our love were so sincere. May God give us that love, over which even the gates of hell cannot prevail.

+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.

As much as I grumble sometimes about contemporary trends in churches there is one which I fully endorse and am encouraged to have seen in recent years. Since the beginning of Church (and you can read all about it in Paul’s Epistles) there has been an uncomfortable dilemma regarding the degree to which Jewish practices have been adopted by gentile Christians. Long story short, it is not only unnecessary but in some cases positively harmful to do so. Yes, Jesus was a faithful Jew, and yes, the Old Covenant was given by the God of Israel who does not abandon his people, but the New Covenant established by Christ’s blood shed for us enjoins on the Church a new set of practices not based on fulfilling the works of the Law. To act as if this weren’t the case leads us down a dangerous path in a number of ways, and particularly with regard to our need to accept the gift of Grace through faith in Christ Jesus.

One particularly peculiar example of this has been the practice in some church communities of holding Passover Seders on Maundy Thursday, under the belief that this was what Jesus and his disciples were doing the night of the Last Supper. In recent years, bishops and theologians have been more vocal in saying “do not do this”, and I heartily approve of their doing so.

For one thing, it is an example of “cultural appropriation” which I realize is a transgression whose enforcement has sometimes gone over the top. A potentially silly example: every time I’ve been to Circle of Friends, the owner or one of her staff has offered to take a picture of our dining party wearing hats from cultures not our own. I don’t think there would be anything objectively wrong in doing so, particularly since the restaurant staff represent those cultures, but not in a million years would I take the chance of such a photo being put online and getting “canceled” over it. The internet is not a place where grace abounds, if you haven’t noticed.

On the other hand, there are boundaries one shouldn’t cross, even with good intentions. I think so-called Christian Seders is an example of this. When asked “why?” the example I always give is the same: How would you feel if the mosque in Perrysburg decided to put on a celebration of the Eucharist? Maybe it wouldn’t bother you, but I for one would find it pretty offensive. Or what if the Toledo chapter of the American Humanist Association started inducting its members by baptizing them in the name of reason and of materialism and of a responsible search for meaning? Now, just as we recognize Jesus was Jewish, a Muslim or a secular humanist might rightly claim (though they’d be loathe to do so) that their worldviews are products of a broader Western tradition defined by the form Christendom took when they were first envisioned, but should this give them a right to reenact a sacred ritual of another religion, whether as a mockery or as a sincere “re-appropriation”? Personally, I don’t think so.

So, by all means, if you ever have Jewish friends who invite you to their Passover Seder, you should go. I’ve been to them several times when I lived in more religiously diverse communities, and they can be wonderful, moving experiences. But we shouldn’t be putting them on.

An even larger issue for me, though, is that a “Christian Seder” makes an assumption which is almost certainly false–namely, that the meal which Jesus and the Apostles shared was a Passover Seder of the sort still practiced by modern Jews, with set prayers and various dishes and glasses of wine representing elements of Israel’s story, and some form of teaching around all of these elements. This, however, is a product of the form Judaism took after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in A.D. 70, nearly forty years after the Last Supper.

Jesus and the Apostles, on the other hand, would have shared a meal much closer to that which we heard about in tonight’s lesson from Exodus. They would have taken the lamb they had sacrificed at the temple earlier in the day, roasted it, and ate it quickly with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. No great ceremony would have attended the meal, and that intentionally, because it was a reminder of the simple sustenance God had given their ancestors on their last night in Egypt. This is why we share such a simple supper on this night between the liturgy and the stripping of the altar–it is meant to give us sustenance (both physically and spiritually) before observing our own Passover, which is the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross for our redemption.

Of course, there is one element which Christ adds to the Passover supper which he and his Apostles had shared–namely the offering of his own body and blood, by which we still, as St. Paul tells us, “shew the Lord’s death till he come.” The most awesome and humbling privilege I have as a priest, what I’ll never deserve to do but thank God I’ve been covered by his Grace, is speaking the words of Jesus “this is my body… this is my blood”, by which the same Grace of God makes real for us every time. The greatest gift I’ve been given as a priest in Christ’s Church is the terrible responsibility of acting in persona Christi for those few moments at every Eucharist. And the greatest gift we all have as Christians this side of Paradise, is to be given that which objectively, spiritually sustains us in all the seasons of our lives, both when things are going well for us and when we feel as if we might be on the cusp of or in the midst of wandering through the spiritual desert just as the Israelites did through a literal one.

As I always make certain to repeat, this is an objective reality, because if left to the subjective appropriation by us sinners it wouldn’t get us very far.

But there is also a sense in which we do benefit subjectively by this objective gift of Grace–it is to the degree that we recognize our own belovedness to God in spite of everything that we are given enough strength to extend that grace by loving others in spite of everything. This is why it is so appropriate that we also observe the mandatum, the washing of feet, as a symbol of the same this night. For years (probably since we reintroduced the practice about fifty years ago) there have been concerns about the message sent by the priest doing the foot-washing rather than everyone washing the feet of whoever is behind him or her in line. I won’t get into all of the arguments about that except to say that sometimes those most concerned with symbols which might imply clericalism are, ironically, often in practice the most authoritarian clergy you’ll ever meet. I think there are reasons for that, but I’ll just leave it at that for now. I think the way we do it, though, is most appropriate simply because there’s no way during Holy Week that a priest is spared “doing all the things” (as our bishop likes to say), but for the rest of you, even acknowledging that so many of you also do so much pertaining to observing Holy Week in the church, also need opportunities to simply abide in Christ’s love. Perhaps this is a dangerous or heretical suggestion, so take it with a grain of salt, but maybe insofar as it is possible, consider the practical application of the Gospel (how to better love my neighbor) on Monday morning. I don’t mean to be more unloving and selfish, obviously, but don’t get all caught up in the “shoulds” right now, which sometimes lead us to trust in our own works, anyway, that being a natural but deadly impulse. For the next three days simply remember that Jesus loves you. He loves you enough to die for you. Let him serve you. Let him show his love for you as we contemplate the Paschal mystery. Let him wash your feet. Let him nourish you with the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation. And tomorrow, remember, that as much as you might want to, you can’t save him. You can’t pull him off the cross and take his place yourself. That’s not how any of this works. Simply gaze on the glory which is the cross of life, on the God who dies, and wait for what comes next.

+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.

You’ll frequently come across arguments, sometimes genuine and sometimes disingenuous, sometimes from secular people and occasionally even from Christians, that if the church really cared for the poor as much as we claimed then we’d just sell all our buildings and give the money away. Such arguments never account for how much good is done for the larger community within church-owned spaces–for example, we have recovery meetings in one space or another here at Trinity every night of the week, who’d be hard-pressed to find any other space that would work for them in terms of both cost and the need for maintaining anonymity. Nor does it account for the fact that frequently churches collaborate to establish institutions which “spin off” to become their own entities to better serve the needs of their communities–I believe this is the case for most if not all of the big, non-profit providers of direct services for the indigent in Findlay. Nor does it account for the data, which tell us that Christians are more than fifty percent more likely to volunteer in the larger community and more than twice as likely to give financially outside their churches for the relief of the poor; this should track (as much as the cultured despisers of religion may dislike it), since our modern concept of charity was invented by the church over and against the classical, pagan concept of philanthropy, which more or less held that doing nice things was good, so long as you got recognition for it.

Most important of all, while this would not move the heart of a secular proponent of ecclesial divestment, it should do for the purportedly Christian ones: while the moral implications of the Gospel should and I think usually do compel us to care first and foremost for the poor and otherwise marginalized in our midst, this is not the primary function of the Church. The primary function of the Church is to worship God and to bring others into deeper relationships with the Lord Jesus Christ, whatever their status, socioeconomically or otherwise. This doesn’t always happen in every congregation of every “flavor” of Christianity all the time. Those who were here for our bible study on Revelation a couple weeks ago will remember that this has been a problem from nearly the beginning; the church in Laodicea was denounced for being what we might today call a “country club parish” who were comfortable and friendly with each other but had lost their evangelistic fervor and their love of Christ. But, swings and roundabouts over the last two millennia aside, I think churches have generally, historically done this well when they put their minds and muscles to it.

All of this is by way of trying to get our heads and hearts around that difficult saying in today’s Gospel: “the poor always ye have with you, but me ye have not always.” Yes, in part Jesus knew that Judas was a robber, that his intentions were not really pure. Judas did not actually want to help the poor. No, Jesus is not saying here that we aren’t obliged to help the poor who are always with us; this particularly profligate use of a luxury good (300 pence, or denarii, being about a year’s worth of wages for a laboror) was, we might say, given “special dispensation,” both because of Jesus’ imminent execution and Mary of Bethany’s genuine devotion in offering of it. So, I’m not saying that a neat equivalent in today’s context would be appropriate for us; we’ll not be burning $50,000 worth of incense at the Easter Vigil.

There is a balance to be struck here, and both common sense and conscience have a role to play. We have the poor with us, and we must give of our time, talent, and treasure to support those in need. We also have Christ still with us. I could be wrong, but “me ye have not always”, I think, refers specifically to the three days between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. The last words Christ says to his disciples and to us before the Ascension implies that we are in the opposite situation: “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” So we are dealing not with an either/or but with a both/and proposition. We are called to do unto the least of our sisters and brothers as we would to Christ himself, AND we are called to support the dignified worship of Christ and all those things which bring us and the world into closer relationships with him.

Next week, it will surprise nobody who knows me, is my favorite week of the year every year. The full battery of Holy Week liturgies accomplishes in a more intense way what every service of worship is aimed at doing–two things simultaneously. First, worship is for our edification. In today’s Epistle, Paul writes to the Philippians about his deepest desire: “That I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; if by any means I might attain to the resurrection of the dead.” His life’s work, his preaching and teaching and service and leadership of the churches he founded or supported were all aimed at this goal, but I also think that for Paul, and certainly for us, the worship of God presents an opportunity for the same in-and-of-itself. All our worship, and particularly our observance of Holy Week, serve to help conform us to Christ, to make us sharers in the fellowship of his suffering and death and help us experience a foretaste of the power and joy of his resurrection.

Secondly, and in my opinion even more importantly, all our worship, from our simple recitation of our daily prayers to the dramatic, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes unimaginably joyous, moments of the most fulsome and complicated solemn liturgies of Holy Week, are undertaken simply because God is worthy of our worship, which is the most important thing we can give him–not because he “needs it” but because we owe it to him. Indeed, we owe God everything. We can’t repay him, but that doesn’t let us off the hook entirely. Our charitable gifts and efforts are due him. So is our obligation to commend the faith that is in us to those who do not know the Lord Jesus. And yes, so too is giving our best, through sharing our talents in art and music to praise God, in attending to the service of the altar as servers and lectors and altar guild members and all the rest, and most importantly in simply being present and attentive and sincerely offering our hearts in worship to the Lord who gave everything for us.

This may all sound like I’m just giving an advertisement-cum-harangue for showing up during Holy Week, and I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a part of it, because I do think it’s important. But that’s not really the point. The point (and this is not universally held, it is Fr. John’s opinion, but I believe it is backed up by scripture and tradition) is that this celebration of the Eucharist–that every public service of the church we do in this space–is not first and foremost about getting one’s spiritual batteries recharged, or getting jazzed up to be more kind and loving and faithful the rest of the week, or learning something helpful or meaningful from the scripture readings or the sermon. Those are all good things, and I hope at least one of them is a “takeaway” for everyone every time we gather; like I said, worship is meant to edify us. But even more importantly in my opinion, is the fact that worship is an end in itself. It is the most important thing we do. I think it’s the thing that the church at its best does best, as important as everything else we do is. We give ourselves and each other and the whole world an opportunity in a life full of obligations and distractions to spend an hour or so at a time to be like Mary of Bethany, with the costly ointment which is our love and care, simply to be with Jesus and to worship him with no motive beyond the fact that he is worth it, he deserves it, and he wants nothing more than to be with us and to share his love and care with us at every moment.

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