Sermons

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

“The old woman took up the shining basin she used for foot washing, and poured in a great deal of water, the cold first and then she added the hot to it. Now [he] was sitting close to the fire, but suddenly turned to the dark side; for presently he thought in his heart that, as she handled him, she might be aware of his scar, and all his story might come out. She came up close and washed her lord, and at once she recognized that scar … The old woman, holding him in the palms of her hands, recognized this scar as she handled it. She let his foot go, so that his leg, which was in the basin, fell free, and the bronze echoed. The basin tipped over on one side, and the water spilled out on the floor. Pain and joy seized her at once, and both eyes filled with tears, and the springing voice was held within her. She took his beard in her hands and spoke to him: ‘Then, dear child, you are really he. I did not know you before; not until I had touched my lord all over.'”

These words are not, you might have guessed, from the bible. They are from the nineteenth book of Homer’s Odyssey, in which Odysseus’ nursemaid, Eurycleia recognizes him after his return to Ithaca.

The classics major in the house asked me what I was searching for the other day when she saw me looking through the relevant bookcase. When I said “The Odyssey”she replied “Greek or English?” “I’ll be quoting a section in my sermon, so English, I guess.” I then explained why—that I remembered Eurycleia was the first to recognize Odysseus, and it was because of touching his scar. She corrected me. “The dog actually recognized him first.” Good point. I hadn’t read the whole thing since high school. Anyway, innocent beasts may have a special power of recognition we fallen humans lack. The point is that Eurycleia was the first person to recognize him. And she recognized him because of his scar. (All this, by the way, is the typical sort of conversation that happens in the rectory. So, now you know.)

I am by no means suggesting here that scripture borrowed from the epic, much less that Christ is some sort of embodiment of a Greco-Roman heroic ideal. As much as I’d love to make off-the-wall connections (say, between the harrowing of hell and Odysseus slaughtering Penelope’s suitors) I don’t actually think that would be justified. Insofar as connections can be made, it’s in how Christ generally subverts all the ideals found in the poetry and mythology of the then prevailing culture.

There is, however, one very human way in which the Christ and the man of many devices (and so many from both legend and history) can be compared. A hero can be identified by his scars.

We hear the story of “Doubting Thomas” on this Sunday every year, and the preacher’s focus is so often on the Apostle—his doubt and his belief. That’s all well and good. I’ve done it probably seventeen times, though I haven’t verified by looking at every sermon I ever preached on this day. But perhaps we should give Thomas a break this year, and look more directly to Christ instead.

Christ’s risen body is, just as ours will be on the last day, spiritual and perfected, albeit still very much a physical body. But while being spiritual and perfect, he still bears the scars of his crucifixion. It is how his identity is confirmed by Thomas after all. Are not these imperfections? Should not Christ’s body be as unblemished as his soul? Is this merely a parlor trick, Christ conjuring an image of wounds where none truly exist to convince an incredulous Apostle?

No, no, and no. These are not defects but symbols of Jesus’ victory on the cross over sin and death. Here is a hero who may be known from his scars.

There was an article in the Courier a few weeks ago in which a couple of mental health providers were interviewed about trauma. I have to be careful here; some of you know that I serve on the county mental health board, and I don’t want to be seen as going off message, but there was one line one of the interviewees gave at which I had to cringe a little. She said “everyone has been traumatized.” Now, I don’t think this is true. If trauma is everything then trauma is nothing, and suggesting that my getting a bit lonesome during Covid lockdowns or whatever is substantively the same as a victim of abuse or who served in a combat zone or who got hit by a truck doesn’t take seriously enough the impact of those experiences. So, I don’t think we’ve all been traumatized.

But I do think we’ve all been banged up at least a bit simply by virtue of living long enough in this fallen world. And in this respect we can take comfort if we follow Christ’s lead rather than Odysseus’. None of us is on a secret mission to infiltrate our own homes and kill our wife’s suitors, requiring us to stay disguised as long as possible. We are on a mission about which we can be fully forthcoming and transparent, on which we can reveal the whole of ourselves insofar as that is useful for spreading the message. This is who I am. This is my scar, the effects of which Christ healed; but the mark remains as a reminder of his great grace toward me.

One word of caution. It is the scar not the open wound to which we point. Healing of body, mind, and soul can be miraculous, but it can also be a process. Even genuine trauma is something from which one can recover; it needn’t and shouldn’t remain an acute pain for ever, and (I say this with love and sympathy) if the suffering itself becomes the totality of one’s experience and identity we may have created an idol and foreclosed the possibility of recovery which is there.

In all events, we can always look to Christ. Those dings and dents we acquire in life, whether in body or soul, do not save the world like Christ’s did, but they do open to us the possibility of identifying with him a bit more and being a bit more grateful in retrospect for both the experience and for the wholeness and healing given us when we were made to genuinely desire the ministrations of the Great Physician.

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

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.