Sermons

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

“What is truth?” It seems a rather modern sort of question for Pilate to ask Jesus, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, I cannot read this bit of John without thinking of one of the professors in a team-taught, interdisciplinary course I took back in college The prof was a video artist and self-labeled hippy who came back from Vietnam with more than just the unkempt beard he still sported. He came back with a cynicism which caused him to reject the faith in which he was formed, to the point of having dreamed as a child (believe it or not) of being a Lutheran pastor. This professor would stop in the middle of his lectures at sometimes appropriate and sometimes inappropriate points and say “’What is truth?’… -Pontius Pilate.” He, like many of his generation, was struggling (seemingly without success) at either figuring out the answer or else rejecting the question as meaningless.

Indeed, this is perhaps the central question of our age. Get beyond the particular controversies of the culture wars, and the question is there: “what is truth?”. Is truth simply that which is empirically or rationally verifiable, as the logical positivists claimed? If they’re right, claims like “two and two make four” or “John is wearing a black stole” are true, but any theological claim is properly meaningless. Is truth simply a human construct, as some postmodernists would claim? If that were the case, my truth and your truth would be so potentially divergent that Pilate’s would be a question without any meaningful answer.

Needless to say, I’m not buying either of these theories of truth. Nor, however, would I be comfortable saying that truth is simple. It is both objective and complex. Now, that’s all well and good for a philosophy class, but what do we say about truth when faced with the beauty and the horror of everything we Just heard in John’s account of the Passion? I think most of us (though perhaps not all), because we find ourselves in church on Good Friday, would say there is a powerful truth in what we just heard, even if we couldn’t put it into the most theologically elegant terms. But imagine how the story would sound for one who is either unable or unwilling to muster up a commitment to the central convictions of our faith, one who hasn’t annually gone through the highs and lows of the Paschal Triduum (these great three days we’re in the midst of). I would imagine that the story would not strike them as hopeful. I would imagine that the only truth they could glean might be the facts as we are presented them. A great man suffers a defeat. All is lost for this man and for those whom he had led.

What is truth? Jesus had answered the question already:

Ἐγώ εἰμι ἡ ὁδὸς καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια καὶ ἡ ζωή

“I am the way and the truth and the life.” Here, Jesus discloses two very important things for our purposes tonight. First, he reminds us of his divinity. “Ἐγώ εἰμι” is a reduntant way of saying “I am” in Greek. He constructs his language, however, to remind us of God’s answer to Moses, when he appeared to him as a burning bush in the third chapter of Exodus:

Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”

God’s answer was four Hebrew letters “yod, he, vav, he”. It means “I am who I am”. God simply is. He is “Pure Being”. Existence is itself affirmation, and thus Christ (who calls himself Ἐγώ εἰμι) is the “yes”, the affirmation, the truth of existence.

If that’s a bit too heady, look at the another word Jesus uses- ἀλήθεια. It’s the Greek word for truth, but it means a great deal more than how we tend to use the word. It doesn’t just mean a correct proposition. It means disclosure, revelation. It literally means “the state of not being hidden”. Christ then, is the truth of God. He is a God whom we can see and touch and taste and love with all our hearts.

I think this can help us look at Jesus’ death in a new way. He was crucified for our sins, and it was our love of sin which killed him. Sin is like a blindfold which shields us from the light of truth. Truth set us free to love, yet we seem to prefer our bondage.

Even with its last breath, though, truth continues. The reality of God’s love is not fully hidden until it is pushed into a tomb and shielded by a stone. What is the last thing Jesus says to anybody that is not specifically to fulfill the Old Testament prophecies?

When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.”

Even with Jesus’ dying breath he reveals the most moving sort of love. Truth gets its final word.

And then we find ourselves at the tomb- not the joyful empty tomb of Easter, but the dark, dank depth of despair. Our Lord and Our God, Our Way and Our Life, Our Love and Our Truth lifeless and dim and obscure. Here is our God, rejected and killed. Here we are, derided and rejected and hopeless. We cannot skip to the happy ending today. Today we die with Christ in his death. Today we mourn. We mourn for ourselves and for the children whom we brought into this cold, unlovely world, this world permeated by death. Who now can save us? We wait and we watch and we try to keep some glimmer of hope amidst the encroaching darkness.

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

I generally avoid basing what books I read based on whether a review is positive or negative. For one thing, I’ve long been of the mind that criticism as a genre is only interesting insofar as it uses texts or other forms of art to develop ideas rather than simply giving a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” to them. For another thing, the world of publishing can be rather mean and incestuous, so expecting anything like an objective recommendation seems a lost cause. That said, I purchased and read a book recently based on a review, but it was precisely because the review in question was rather negative.

A few weeks ago the New Yorker’s James Wood wrote a review of Marylinne Robinson’s new book Reading Genesis, which is, as one might expect, her own reflection on the first book of the Bible. I have read both some of Robinson’s novels and a couple of her essay collections and loved them, so I would have likely eventually acquired a copy of this new book anyway. That said, I felt compelled to purchase it immediately after Wood’s review, which struck me as rather adolescently petulant. His problem with the book seemed to come down entirely to Ms. Robinson’s approach to the Bible as a whole–specifically, that she takes it seriously, regards it as scripture rather than mere bronze age mythology, and believes it to be a theological document instead of a purely literary work. In short, Wood’s problem was that she was writing as a Christian rather than as a “cultured despiser of religion” (to use Schleiermacher’s phrase) like himself. In all events, I’m glad I bought the book and I’m glad I read it, and I wish the New Yorker’s editorial staff would consider assigning reviews for these sorts of books to, if not their critics who happen to be religious (of which there are some!) then at least to those who are less openly hostile to faith. I’ve not considered canceling my subscription of course; it says something about my perhaps twisted priorities and cultural inheritance that I think of taking the New Yorker as just “the done thing”, like voting or cutting the grass or avoiding swear words in the presence of one’s grandmother. I may be having second-thoughts about this, though.

Anyway, back to Robinson’s book, it addresses and I think more-or-less satisfactorily answers a problem I have long had with one of the points of tension we find in Scripture, particularly in the Old Testament. Over and over again, God is shown to be either ambivalent or outright opposed to sacrifice. “Thinkest thou that I will eat bulls’ flesh and drink the blood of goats?” He asks, incredulously in Psalm 50. “If I be hungry I will not tell thee!” “I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell your solemn assemblies,” God declares in the Book of the Prophet Amos. “Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace offering of your fat beasts.” I could go on ad nauseam. The point which God seems to stress over and over again is that his desire is not for sacrifice, but for righteousness and gratitude.

And yet, these same sacrifices which God seems to despise he is elsewhere said to require. In the primeval history of the first half of Genesis and through the times of the Patriarchs and Judges God demands, receives, and looks favorably upon sacrifice if made properly. With the coming of the Jerusalem Temple the sacrificial system was codified according to God’s own Law. Yes, sacrifice became highly localized and its widespread use prorogued, but this dispensation of constraint was meant to further legitimize and sacralize the sacrificial system of temple worship rather than to discourage sacrifice as such.

So how do we deal with this apparent contradiction? As I said, I think Ms. Robinson finally answered this for me, and while the concepts she presents were already in my theological and exegetical toolbox, as it were, she says it so clearly that it finally sunk in perfectly.

What intention were the pagan gods of the nations said to have had for creating humanity in the first place? Simply to build them temples and feed them with the offerings of animals–and, all too often, human beings–to slake their hunger and avert their arbitrary wrath. This seems, by the way, to be a universal impulse within fallen humanity; this was ubiquitous not only the nations of the Ancient Near East. It was ascendant among peoples with whom the denizens of the so-called “Cradle of Civilization” had no contact whatsoever, from distant East Asia as early as the Third Millenium before Christ to (perhaps most infamously) the native tribes of Meso-America. These gods had no interest in establishing cordial relations with humanity. They were as likely to inflict death and disaster on the populace because humanity had become too noisy for them to nap as they were to send a good harvest in recognition of sufficient children slain upon their altars. To be appeased these gods received not just the lion’s-share but the entirety, and even this may or may not appease them.

But then God (by which I mean the one God who actually exists, the God of Abraham and Israel and Jesus) took this apparently universal impulse and, in anticipation of the day when no more sacrifice would be required, did more than merely constrain the practice. (For example, whatever you do, don’t sacrifice human beings, which seems clearly to be the lesson intended in Abraham’s binding of Isaac, despite what the pearl-clutching rants of those more sensitive and “enlightened” than I might have it!) He not only constrains the impulse but transforms both the practice and our hearts. No longer were the sacrifices meant to appease the capricious whims of the gods. They became a sign and a token which, once the savor of the bulls and goats would reach the nostrils of the Almighty, the meat itself would immediately be returned both to the families who had offered the beasts and to the poor in their midst who had no means of providing even what little was required. The offering retained the nature of a sacrifice while taking on the additional quality of a meal, shared in loving communion with God with family and with stranger.

This is why, I think, to finally turn to our lessons for this evening, there is as much concern in our reading from Exodus, with how the Passover lamb was to be provided, shared, and eaten than with the finer points of ritual sacrifice. This is why God insists that this meal be a perpetual ordinance and a memorial rather than an occasional sacrifice for whenever the children of Israel might again find themselves in as tenuous a situation as that of their last night of slavery in Egypt. This is why (and here we must as Gentile Christians acknowledge not only our debt to but God’s continued provision for his chosen people) two thousand years after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, circumstances which would have simply caused the cult of any pagan god to go extinct, through centuries of persecution often scandalously perpetrated by our own coreligionists, the Jews have managed to maintain their faith and identity without a temple made by hands.

For us Christians, simultaneously grafted on to God’s original covenant people and made a new creation, there is yet another glorious, providential twist. In the hymn with which we end this evening’s liturgy St. Thomas Aquinas puts it succinctly–“types and shadows have their ending, for the newer rite is here.” On this night when Christ establishes the Eucharist, it becomes clear that while our own Passover is both meal and sacrifice, the sacrifice itself is bloodless. No longer must a lamb be slain year after year for the sacrifice to be offered and the meal to be shared with friend and stranger. The Lamb of God, Christ Jesus himself, would do it once for all before receiving his crown of glory and giving himself continuously until we should join him in that place where he reigns for eternity.

To make the point more obvious we will, as we do every year, share a meal–the agape or “love feast”–which is more obviously a meal than the sacrifice we share at this altar–and we will experience first in the washing of feet and then in the reading of the seventeenth chapter of John’s Gospel during supper, what it is all about. It is, it should be no surprise, all about love. God’s love for us. Our love for him. The love we share one with another more perfectly, not because we are inherently loving or lovable (sometimes we can be anything but that) but because God’s love miraculously abides in us.

And so, before we retreat to dark Gethsemane and then to even darker Golgotha, to the pitch black of the tomb and the utter gloom of Hell itself, we tarry here a bit longer with our Lord and with each other. For he has given us all to one another, to cling closely to one another, to embrace each other with the love we cannot understand, much less express. Yet here we find the prize for which none can pay. Here we find the balm which heals the nations and our hearts. Here we lay claim to an inheritance not our own by right but given us nonetheless. Here we see and feel and hear and taste and touch the only thing that truly matters–perfect love made manifest in bread and wine; perfect love expressed (however feebly and imperfectly) in loving service and company shared; perfect love heard and accepted in the words of our Savior’s promise; perfect love which alone can see us through our darkest hours; love strong as death, strong as hell, strong as the designs of any man or angel. In this love we find life and hope and purpose. In this alone we must put our trust, for God’s love is the only thing that will not disappoint. God’s love is the only thing that matters.

+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.

“Thou art a priest for ever, after the order of Melchiz’edek.” Thus, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews describes Jesus’ priesthood, but what on earth does it mean?

We don’t get much help from the 110^th Psalm which the author references, one of only two places in the Old Testament where Melchiz’edek is mentioned. Here’s an exerpt:

The Lord has sworn and he will not recant:*
“You are a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.”
The Lord who is at your right hand will smite kings in the day of his wrath;*
he will rule over the nations.
He will heap high the corpses;*
he will smash heads over the wide earth.

I don’t know about you, but this seems a rather strange, disturbing way of understanding Jesus’ place in salvation history. Certainly, the kingship of the Father overturning temporal rulers and the Kingdom of God taking precedence over earthly nations is central to Christian eschatology, but the bit about heaping up corpses and smashing heads seems unhelpful at first blush.

I think a better way of understanding what the author of Hebrews means is to look back to the fourteenth chapter of Genesis. After a losing battle with Chederlao’mer, the King of Elam, Abram’s nephew Lot had been captured. Abram led a force of Hebrews to rout the king and take back his kinsman. After succeeding in battle, this strange figure comes to Abram and his victorious army:

And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was the priest of the most high God. And he blessed him, and said, “Blessed be Abram of the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth: And blessed be the most high God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand.” And he gave him tithes of all.

After this, Melchiz’edek disappears from the Old Testament, the only exception being in the psalm already mentioned.

Even with so little information, we can glean a few things from this brief passage. Firstly, Melchiz’edek was not a Jew, but seemed nonetheless committed to the God of Israel. Secondly, he received tithes from Abraham, suggesting his superiority to even the father of God’s chosen people. Thirdly, he is the first figure in scripture to be called a priest (the Hebrew word kohen) a title normally reserved to priests in the temple in Jerusalem. And finally, he brings forth elements which would become sacerdotal for both Jews and Christians- namely bread and wine.

We can employ here what is called the typological meaning of scripture. The idea (employed from very early on in Christian biblical interpretation and even within the New Testament) is that certain things in the Old Testament, particularly obscure things, can be understood as foreshadowing things in the New Testament. So, last week we heard in the Old Testament this strange story about Moses holding up a bronze snake in the wilderness that the ill could gaze upon and be healed, and then in the Gospel Jesus explained that this was a type–a foreshadowing–of his own death on the cross.

Likewise, while at first obscure, the author of Hebrews tells us that Jesus makes sense of the meaning of Melchiz’edek. Just as Melchiz’edek was not a Hebrew, Jesus (while a Jew himself) instituted a Covenant open to Gentiles. Just as Melchiz’edek was of higher stature than Abraham, so is Jesus the final consummation of the Law and the Prophets. Just as Melchiz’edek was the first priest, Jesus would become the first and Great High Priest of the New Covenant. Just as Melchiz’edek offered bread and wine, so did Jesus offer his Body and Blood for our sins and give it to us in the appearance of bread and wine.

In some ways, Melchiz’edek was the priest par excellence of the Old Covenant (despite arriving generations before the establishment of that Covenant) and Jesus is the priest par excellence of the New Covenant. While the priests in the temple obediently offered their sacrifices, they were in some sense a shadow of the perfect and more universal sacrifice of Melchiz’edek. While the priests of the New Covenant obediently offer the sacrifice of Christ’s Body and Blood at the Altar week-in and week-out, these sacrifices are entirely dependent on the one perfect sacrifice of Jesus.

As we draw closer to those great days when we recreate the tremendous sacrifice and glorious triumph of our God, let us remember what a Great High Priest we have: how the perfect sacrifice for our sins and the great freedom we’ve been given, is ultimately dependent not on our piety, not on how we struggle to attend to the sacred mysteries at the altar and the font, but how it is all an objective gift of our only mediator and advocate–the one priest through which priesthood is given to His Body and Spouse, the Church.

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