The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Fourth Sunday in Lent
March 22, 2020
The Rev’d Armando Ghinaglia
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Third Sunday in Lent
March 15, 2020
Sermon begins at 5:50.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Our reading from Exodus comes shortly after the Israelites escape from Egypt. After four hundred years of slavery, God responded to his people’s cries and called Moses to lead the Israelites out of bondage into the land that God had promised their ancestors long ago. And though they were skeptical at first, God’s people realized that this God—their God, our God—works wonders because this God saved them, time and again, from the hand of their enemies. By now, the Israelites should know that this God loves them—that this God, the true God, is faithful.
And that’s precisely what they sing just a couple chapters earlier: “I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider has he thrown into the sea. . . . Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in splendor, doing wonders? . . . In your steadfast love you led the people whom you redeemed . . . .”
But once they reach the wilderness, they quickly forget the wonders that God showed them in the land of Egypt—and more than those, God’s love and faithfulness all throughout. They lose faith. They complain to Moses and Aaron, ignoring God’s words as they start the journey: “I am the Lord who heals you.”
The first time, God is gracious. “I have heard the complaining of the Israelites . . . ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.’” The Israelites still seem to don’t trust God, but God bears with them all the same and gives them each day their daily bread.
In our reading today, the Israelites find something else to complain about: “Give us water to drink.” When Moses points out that their complaint is really a complaint against God’s faithfulness, the people insist: “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?”
Now God is gracious but upset: Moses, go, “[s]trike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.” And yet as the psalm today puts it, “Forty years long I detested that generation and said, ‘This people are wayward in their hearts; they do not know my ways.’ So I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter into my rest.’”
Over a thousand years later, the Son of this same God is “tired out by his journey” and decides to sit by a well. As a Samaritan woman comes by, Jesus says to her, “Give me a drink.” Oh, how the tables have turned! The one who is himself living water thirsts, but he does not fear death from that thirst, as the Israelites did in the wilderness. Christ offers the woman what God offered sometime in the wilderness to the Israelites: “If you knew the gift of God, . . . you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” And “[t]he water that I will give will become in [you] a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”
“Where do you get that living water?” the woman asks him.
There, on the cross. “Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.” And so “[o]ne of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once blood and water came out.”[i] The woman asks him to give her this water so that she may never be thirsty or have to keep coming back to the well to seek it for herself. And indeed, “it is by God’s will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all,”[ii] Christ the “atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.”[iii]
Nothing presents that sacrifice more clearly or more tangibly than the bread and wine offered in the Eucharist, which become for us the body and blood of Christ. This sacrament we celebrate today, albeit in a new way, points us to the loving and faithful God who continues to show wonders among us and who promises to be with us always, even in the wilderness.
Friends, today and in the weeks ahead, we find ourselves, like the Israelites, in a new kind of wilderness. Closing churches to public worship, not receiving the consecrated bread and wine in person, preaching to a congregation assembled virtually on Facebook Live—none of this is terribly familiar to most of us, not to mention COVID-19 itself. As Christians, what are some of the ways we can respond to these new and unexpected circumstances?
First, let us be subject to the authorities, for in this public health emergency, they are God’s servant for our good and the good of all those around us.[iv] Difficult times call for difficult decisions. The decision to close a church to public worship even temporarily is never easy. But God willing, time will tell that it was the right thing to do—the most loving choice that protects the most vulnerable among us. As such, that decision is its own Christian witness, to our respect for human life and to our faith in God’s unfailing goodness toward us.
Second, though it may pain us not to share in communion all together here and now, rest assured, as the Prayer Book says, that “all the benefits of Communion are received, even though the Sacrament is not received with the mouth.”[v] The God who made a way in the wilderness, who brought forth streams from parched ground, is just as able to nourish our souls in other ways, to make a way to our own hearts, that he might dwell in us and we in him. Trust that God will be faithful.
Lastly, a related point: “Pray without ceasing.”[vi] In this wilderness, God invites us to worship “neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem,” as Jesus tells the Samaritan woman, but “in spirit and truth.” As Saint Peter writes, “Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.”[vii] Pray when you wake up, and pray when you go to bed. Pray wherever you may be. Pray for the church. Pray for the nation and the world. Pray for your city and your state. Pray for all who are ill and for all who are vulnerable. Pray for all who are treating them and for all who work for our good. Pray for strength. Pray for faith. Pray for hope.
And as we raise those prayers to God on high, whatever fears or anxieties we may have, hold fast to that most comforting promise given to us in the Scriptures:
Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.[viii]
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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[i] Jn. 19:34.
[ii] Heb. 10:10.
[iii] 1 Jn. 2:2.
[iv] Rom. 13:1–4.
[v] BCP 457.
[vi] 1 Th. 5:17.
[vii] 1 Pet. 5:7.
[viii] Rom. 8:38–39.
The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Second Sunday in Lent
March 8, 2020
In this homily for the second Sunday in Lent, the Rector explores what Jesus may be saying to Nicodemus when he tells him he must be born “from above”. Christ’s birth, death, resurrection, and ascension have saved creation. What does it mean, therefore, to live as though we believe it? Can our lives be something new? Can we be born from above?
The Rev’d Armando Ghinaglia
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The First Sunday in Lent
March 1, 2020
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Before God made woman as his partner, “the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.’”
Here’s Paradise—just don’t eat from that one tree!
But “the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made.” And notice what the serpent does when he comes to the woman: he lies. Or at least he misleads the woman. “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” Of course, if you have the text in front of you, you know very well that isn’t what God told the man. God told the man, “you may freely eat of every tree in the garden,” but “you shall not eat” “of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”
Note that the woman wasn’t around when God told the man what he could and couldn’t eat, but somehow, between then and now, she learned the command, whether from God or from the man himself. “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’”
Again—not what God actually says. Nowhere does God say, “don’t touch it.” But where Satan’s craftiness puts words in God’s mouth that God never said or intended, it’s the woman’s innocence—and her wisdom—that adds those words. Touching the fruit might as well be on par with trying to eat it.
But the serpent parries her wisdom with his craftiness: “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
What follows is, in my mind, one of the most eloquent verses in all of Scripture: “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.” The serpent tricks her and the man in two ways: first, he offers them half-truths, and second, he presents them with evil under the aspect of a good.
The half-truth is this: When you eat of the fruit of the tree, “you will not die.” Remember, God had said, “in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” In a sense, they don’t. They live for hundreds of years afterward. But in a truer sense, they die that very die: first, they lose their innocence; second, they lose Paradise; and third, they lose eternal life.
The serpent’s half-truth clarifies, for the first time in Scripture, the distinction between physical and spiritual death. To the woman—and so often to us—it’s hard to imagine or care about the difference. One seems far more visceral to us. Just look around at our reaction to the new coronavirus epidemic to see that. We take care and stock up on water and hand sanitizer and masks. And I don’t mean to criticize that; do listen to the public health authorities and what they tell us. But what I mean to point out is how much more real that danger feels—even to most of us—than the just-as-real danger that we live in bondage to sin and that we face spiritual death.
And a big part of the reason for that is the second way that the serpent tricks our first parents: he presents them with evil—that is, with spiritual death—under the aspect of what is good—here, food, life, and wisdom. Look back at the woman eating the fruit. She doesn’t do it because she hates God or be-cause she’s just curious. She did it because she “saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise.”
Eating of the fruit of that tree seemed good for their physical health; it even seemed good for their spiritual health—but for one thing: the man and the woman in the garden trusted more in their own judgment of what was good for them than in God’s. And when they eat of the fruit of the tree and their eyes are opened, as indeed they are, they learn in their newfound wisdom—before they learn anything else—that they are naked. They learn shame, and they attempt the first cover-up in history by sowing together fig leaves and making themselves loincloths.
Whether we realize it or not, we do the exact same thing when we sin. Some-thing presents itself to our sight or senses. We consider the thing and delight in it as a good. And we choose to pursue it—even though God and others have warned us that it will be bad for us. The early church referred to this cycle as suggestion, delight, and consent. The tempter suggests it; we delight in it in our minds; and we consent to doing it, whether in our minds or in our bodies. The suggestion itself isn’t sinful; what’s sinful is delighting in the bad thing that suggests itself to us and, even worse, consenting to it.
If you want to see where that leads, look at our gospel reading for today. The devil tries the same two tricks on Jesus that he used successfully in the garden: he tries to mislead him, and he tries to present him with evil under the aspect of good.
First, the devil presents Jesus with evil under the aspect of good in three ways. He tries to convince Jesus to turn stones into loaves of bread; he tries to convince Jesus to throw himself off the temple to fulfill the Scriptures and show his power over the angels; and he tries to convince Jesus to rule over the kingdoms of the earth.
This is where delight came in as sin for the man and woman in the garden, who failed to see how each of these might be evils masquerading as goods. And it’s not hard to see why this would be so. After all, Jesus has just spent forty days and forty nights in the wilderness; he’s famished. Why not make himself some bread? Plus, Jesus has a chance to show the devil who’s really in charge here by having angels attend him. And finally Jesus could figure that it’d be worth switching allegiances if he were to receive all the world’s glory in return.
But Jesus shuts each of these down quickly. He does not delight in them, much less consent to them, because he sees them for what they are: temptations to put our trust in something other than God’s word. And notice just how often those temptations can arise in our own lives and in others’: food, and health, and glory.
As to food, Jesus is hungry, and while eating is no evil, the tempter wants him to believe that physical nourishment is what is essential to a good life. Not so, says Jesus. “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” In Scripture, it is not the rich man with a full granary who is said to have life, but it is Lazarus, once poor, who was fed the scraps from the rich man’s table, who is led into the heavenly city and enters eternal rest.
As to health, the devil presents Jesus with the ability to show him and others that God will save him from physical death if he wills it—and by extension, that our physical health is what is also essential to a good life. Again, not so, says Jesus, not because God couldn’t, but because God does not will it: “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” In Scripture, the best life we find isn’t a man who lives an incredibly long life devoid of suffering or pain; what we find instead is Christ Jesus, who “suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, died, and was buried.”
As to glory, the devil makes clear the whole aim of all these tricks, and utters, in desperation it seems, the greatest lie he can muster: “Fall down and worship me” and “I will give you” “all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor.” And here is the ultimate deception. This is the lie that sin seems to promise us if we are willing to delight in it and consent to it: that we can have everything we want or need apart from God.
But the ancient gloss on Scripture reads that “Christ saw [these kingdoms], not as we see, with the eye of lust, but as a doctor looks on a disease without receiving any hurt.” He sees the world’s peoples for what they are: not as things to be exploited for his own gain, but as sick people in need of a physician, whose hearts are inclined to evil, often under the aspect of the good. Jesus recognizes that we fail, time and again, to remember what we find set forth in the Wisdom of Solomon: “God created us for incorruption, and made us in the image of his own eternity, but through the devil’s envy death entered the world, and those who belong to his company experience it.”
The death we ought to be most concerned with isn’t what will happen to our bodies, which is the death that most often motivates our sin; it’s what happens, and will happen, to our souls, because only in doing God’s will shall we find freedom. And as Saint Paul writes elsewhere, “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”
“Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.”
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Ash Wednesday
February 26, 2020
In this homily for Ash Wednesday the Rector uses the imagery of the cross signed in ashes on our foreheads on this fast day to invite us to remember the sin in our own lives—but also to remember God’s saving mercy and grace.
The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Last Sunday after the Epiphany
February 23, 2020
Today is the last Sunday after Epiphany, the Sunday before Ash Wednesday. We’ll say our last Alleluias this Sunday. On Tuesday we’ll gather and use up all the tempting fat and sugar in the larder by making pancakes for our Shrove Tuesday supper together. We’ll burn the palms used in rejoicing on Palm Sunday last year and use the ashes to mark our foreheads with the sign of the cross the next day, Ash Wednesday, and our Lenten fast will begin.
We set aside these forty days each year, this time between Epiphany, the recognition of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ breaking into the world, and the Easter Triduum--Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter itself--the time when we mark Christ’s sacrifice--his death--and his resurrection--those saving acts that bring us new life, joined to him, drawn into the sacred heart of God. We set aside this time to pray, to fast, to examine our lives and repent. It’s a time to focus on sin--the things that separate us from God, the things that keep us from being the thing in creation that God has made us to be. The things we do--the things done to us--and the things done on our behalf.
Perhaps it seems strange--to have a season to stop and look at sin, at evil in the world. Shouldn’t we pay attention to the good things around us? If we focus on sin, on evil, on the things that are wrong, what if we become overwhelmed or lose sight and perspective of what’s good? Why would we spend a season, a time in the wilderness as it were, looking at sin and its consequences?
Won’t we just get depressed, throw in the towel, lose our sense of joy and wonder in the world if we look at what’s wrong? Won’t we lose our sense of self confidence if we look at what’s wrong with ourselves? Won’t we just dissolve into puddle of guilt and shame if we acknowledge our own sin--how we fail to love God, and how we fail to love others--or even ourselves?
That’s not really how self-examination works, is it, and it’s not how Lent works.
To be fair, if we failed to examine the evil in the world, if we failed to acknowledge the impact of sin on our lives, on those around us, on all of creation, we’d be living a lie--sticking our heads in the sand, as the expression goes--ignoring the truth of the world around us.
All we need do is open the paper, turn on the news, listen to a podcast of the day’s headlines to know that things are broken. That there is real sin in the world. All we need to is spend a moment alone with ourselves in quiet contemplation to know the effect sin has had on our own lives--and the effects of the sin that we’ve committed against God and one another. It can seem overwhelming.
As a break from the overwhelming grind of this year’s news, I took a detour last week to read a column in the Times that caught my eye. Psychologist Lisa Damour, a regular contributor to CBS News and The New York Times, wrote a piece called “Why Teenagers Reject Parents’ Solutions to Their Problems.”[1] Being neither a parent nor a teenager I of course found this column interesting; I’m always glad to know more about how other people should be raising their children.
But Damour had useful things to say--things that are applicable to more than just a parent-child relationship--things that are applicable to all of us. She pointed out that when a young adult comes to a parent and complains about something, that an instinct to immediately try and fix the problem may actually backfire and send the signal that the child is not capable of solving her or his own problem. That is, a well-meaning desire to make the world better for a child may end up leading to unintentionally squelching the child’s own development.
Instead, Damour suggests three things:
First, that young people want a chance to talk through whatever problems they’re facing. In verbalizing what’s going on, they can organize their own thoughts and make a plan about what to do next. They want to talk.
Secondly, they want to be heard. Young people want to know that parents hear and are taking seriously their concerns. “Yes, that’s really tough.” “I hear you.” “No wonder you’re upset!” A little empathy goes a long way to affirming the young person’s reality.
And finally, a little encouragement works wonders. “That’s a hard situation, but you’ve come through harder things before.” Showing confidence in a young person gives them permission to get through the situation, to take steps for change. Encouragement helps bridge the hard spots when things are tough and helps build self confidence.
After using those tools, Damour says, parents can ask, Do you want my help? And listen to their child’s response.
Listen. Encourage. Build up. Empathize.
All of these things are really about the feeling the child has of being seen. Are my problems taken seriously? Am I being heard? Does my parent believe I am capable? Will I be okay?
I think that’s what all of us are really looking for. To be seen. To be known. To be heard. To know that we will be okay.
Am I seen? Will I be okay?
There’s a danger in the work that we do in Lent of looking at sin--in the world and in our own lives. Perhaps we’ll feel overwhelmed by the evil in the world, incapable of vanquishing it on our own. Perhaps we’ll feel discouraged or shamed when we acknowledge our own sin--that we can’t live differently, that we can’t be good enough. That we’ve failed.
And into that breach, into that place of shame and fear, our Lord comes.
That’s the story of Epiphany, isn’t it--that Jesus comes among us--the very love of God enfleshed and made human--and creation begins to know--regular people, shepherds and kings, begin to learn that God has broken into God’s own creation. That the Son of God is here.
At his birth when the angels sang to the shepherds, at the arrival of the three kings, at his baptism when the voice of God spoke and announced, “This is my Son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased…”(Mt 3.17)
The story of the Transfiguration is the high point, the culmination, of this tale of revelation. Jesus’s disciples, Peter and John and James, go up a mountain with Jesus, and there they have a vision--a vision of Jesus shining, resplendent, even his clothes dazzling white--luminous. And in that space, in the intensity of the light, Moses and Elijah appear, and they talk with Jesus. Suddenly a voice proclaims, just as at his baptism, “’This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!’ When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear.” (Mt 17.5-6)
Why do the disciples fall to the ground?
I always think that it’s probably because the event of the transfiguration--seeing Moses and Elijah--seeing Jesus’s face, luminous, shining, his clothes burning white--that amazing moment that seems so unusual and supernatural--that must be frightening. That’s what’s knocked them to the ground, that’s what’s shocked them, made them turn their faces and cover their eyes.
But what if it’s something different.
What if, in the burning light of Jesus’s clothes and face, his own body, suddenly they see the darkness that creeps in the world, that inhabits the lives they live, the broken sinfulness of the world in the light of his perfect love. What if they fall to the ground and cover their eyes in fear and despair--not fear of their friend, not fear of Moses and Elijah whom they know--all these are beacons of hope! What if they fall down in fear of the world around them--in fear of themselves--in fear of how they’ve fallen short of the kingdom of God that Jesus has revealed to them--in his life, and all in an instant, in this flash of blazing light.
That’s our fear, isn’t it, in looking at the world around us--in examining our own sinfulness. That it may be too much. That it may overwhelm and crush us. That the evil of the world may do us in. That we may die.
“But Jesus came and touched them, saying, ‘Get up and do not be afraid.’ And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.” (Mt 17.7)
All we want is to be seen. All we need is to be fully known--and yet fully loved.
And in that moment of fear, in that moment of panic, as they lay on the ground and covered their faces, the disciples saw Jesus again for the first time as he walked over, touched them, and said, “Get up and do not be afraid.”
Can’t you imagine him extending a hand, pulling Peter, and then James, and then John up from the ground. Reaching out his arms in love and embracing each, pulling them close.
And in that moment, all the fear of evil, the fear of failure, the fear of brokenness, the fear of death falls away as they rest in the arms of their friend who loves them.
Lisa Damour is right. When we go to someone with a problem we first want to be heard; the first step in getting to a solution is telling the story--being heard--finding acceptance and love.
Because only then can we open up and look honestly at the situation.
Only then can we look honestly at ourselves.
And only then can we find hope for change.
That’s what the story of the Transfiguration is saying to me today. That Jesus has come among us--that the love of God has assumed human form and has hiked up that mountain with us--and when we look down around us and see the brokenness of the world--the brokenness of our own lives--when we fall to the ground in fear and anxiety and grief--that the hand of Jesus reaches out, and touches our shoulder, and grasps us by the hand, and pulls us up close--and then into an embrace of total and perfect love.
Friends, the work of Lent is hard. The work of honesty is hard. The work of the Christian life is hard.
And we can do it--because he has first loved us.
As we enter into Lent I invite you to look fearlessly at the sin of the world about us. I invite us to look at our own sin. How is it that we have separated ourselves from God? How have we separated ourselves from one another? How is it that we have hurt ourselves?
What will it take to love God totally, fearlessly, fully? What will it take to love one another with all we are and all we have? What will it take to love ourselves?
You are seen. You are heard. So let’s look honestly at those things that tear us and all creation down. Without fear. Because the Lord is at our side, offering perfect acceptance, perfect love.
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[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/18/well/family/why-teenagers-reject-parents-solutions-to-their-problems.html?action=click&auth=login-email&login=email&module=Features&pgtype=Homepage (last accessed 2/21/2020)
The Rev’d Deacon Raul Ausa-Velazco
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany
February 16, 2020
Some of us may remember that in the late 1980s there was an ad campaign by the Episcopal Church which released a number of clever and cheeky posters. One of the most popular and well-known was an image of King Henry VIII under the words “In the church started by a man who had six wives, forgiveness goes without saying.” Of course there was a lot of debate then and since regarding the semantics and accuracy of this—Henry VIII wasn’t quite exactly the founder of Anglicanism, as many will point out, however the point being made was clear: the Church was trying to admit and advertise itself as that which we have so often pretended we are not: a company of sinners walking together.
I’m sure hearing that makes us a little uncomfortable. The language of sin and being sinners can be and has often been abused, especially to single out particular groups who have been deemed different and nonconformist in order to marginalize and scapegoat them. This has happened so often, in fact, that it has led many to even question the value of such a notion as sin. What value can such language have, especially when, if we think about it, all of us can be accused to being sinners?
In this morning’s gospel, we read a passage from the Sermon on the Mount wherein Jesus expands upon the Ten Commandments. And he expands them to perhaps an extreme and unrealistic level. He equates murder and anger, calling a brother a fool with blasphemy, and lustful thoughts with adultery.
His exhortation begs the questions, who among us has not been angry? Who among us hasn’t called our siblings fools, or worse? Who among us has not had something against someone, or at some point lusted for something or someone? Whom among us doesn’t know someone who is divorced, whom are also good and upstanding people? Are all of us bound to burn in hell?
How are we to understand this part of Jesus’ most famous and perhaps most important sermon? If read a certain way, it can certainly leave us feeling hopeless. What exactly is Jesus demanding of us? Are we truly expected to be perfect?
Scholars tell us that this sermon, and its counterpart, Luke’s Sermon on the Plain, were probably compilations of Jesus’ most important and well-known teachings stitched together in this scene to form Jesus’ manifesto—his constitution for the community of those will follow him.
If we separate Jesus’ words from Jesus himself, we are bound to misstep. In this sermon, this manifesto, Jesus is not merely giving a new way of living that is impossible; rather, he is creating the new community around himself, and intimately bound with him, of those who live as if Jesus is Lord, that blessed company we now call the Church. So, we these ways of living that Jesus describes are more about the community than individuals seeking personal perfection.
I imagine that most of us here, hearing these strict precepts laid out, may have felt hopeless, guilty, and perhaps a little resentful, thinking to ourselves, “This isn’t realistic. Who could possibly that way?” Indeed, no one can live up these standards on their own. And some scholars would suggest that this is the whole point.
These impossibly high standards are meant to take away our confidence in our own individual goodness and force us to rely instead on God and each other.
And so we begin to see how this sermon becomes the constitution of a community, and one which no longer trusts in its own righteousness, but on God’s and on God’s abiding presence with his Church.
One of the challenges we face in dealing with sin is that we have historically tended to make it rather large and cosmic. Sin is innate and original—it is the doing of the evil one—it’s beyond our control. But sin is also our daily companion, often consisting of the little wanderings from the way of God into our own ways. Yes, sin is cosmic and is a by-product of a created universe that allows for freedom of choice, and yes, know that evil is real. But it is also personal and incarnate, and for most of us, takes the form of a daily struggle to contain our straying and return to God.
If we have this community-creating aspect of Jesus’ words in mind, we might begin to notice how all of these difficult saying find their deeper meaning in this focus. Jesus draws out the communal aspect of sin when he says that if any of them have anything against a sibling, they should leave their sacrificial offering at the temple, leave, become reconciled with that sibling, and only then return to the temple. Jesus is trying to get us to know that our relationships with our neighbors reflected in our relationship with God. We are not able to offer sacrifices and present ourselves before God in prayer with integrity if we are harboring ill will towards his fellow children. There is a seamless continuity between our relationship with God and all our other relationships.
I’m sure the Jesus’ words about divorce this morning must have made some of us squirm. We certainly don’t think of remarriage as adultery in this day and age, and we are a bit more liberal in allowing couples to choose to end their covenant for a number of reasons. But what’s worth noting is that Jesus is describing a community that doesn’t require the remarriage of women. These words were spoken at a time and in a culture when a woman was economically and socially expected to be married. If she was not, then great sin must have accompanied her—there must be some reason no one wants her. Here, Jesus is constituting a community whereby, in the words of theologian Stanley Hauerwas: “[If] women who have been abandoned do not have to be remarried, then surely the church must be a community of friendship that is an alternative to the loneliness of the world.” In the first century, the conservative patriarchal Roman family would have looked at the immoral Christian community as a den of iniquity and unusual friendships.
Jesus’ teaching on the taking of oaths was probably the most confusing for most of us—and the best hint that what he’s talking about here is building a new community. We are told no longer swear by anything either in heaven or below, and instead let our “Yes be yes and our no be no.” Oaths are interesting because, when you think about, they basically say, “We usually lie a little bit – or a lot – but in this case, I really mean it.” Taking an oath means that lying and deception are the usual workings of things, but now, now I’m really telling the truth. Perhaps we can remember being in a situation where someone said something we didn’t quite believe and we said something like, “Do you swear?”
No, Jesus is saying that in this new community of his followers what you can expect is that people will always speak the truth. Jesus teaches that just as our worship of God is bound together with our treatment of our neighbors, so too is our speech. We should always be mindful that our speech is ever before God, and treat every promise as an oath.
So we can see in this sermon the creation of a community that needs God and each other, a community that no longer lives by the virtue of its own righteousness and instead knows its sin all too well. Yes, we are all sinners. And thus we are all dependent on the mercy of God and of one another.
There’s nothing harder than seeking forgiveness when you are convinced that you are perfectly good. What could you possibly have to be forgiven for? Jesus’ words this morning provide us with an antidote to that certainty. How are we measuring up to these standards? These are not here to make us feel bad. They are here to draw us closer to God and to our neighbors in humility and striving. Once you realize that we are not as good as we may have thought, then can we begin to rejoice in the goodness of God.
All of us, have fallen and will continue to fall short of what God’s glory and it is our common knowledge of that fact that binds us together. If we say that we are without sin, we deceive ourselves.
But in that truth we find that we are not alone: we are bound in a community of fellow sinners who are trying, each and every day, to live holier lives—to walk closer with each other and our Creator.
May God grant us the grace to see and know that we are sustained by a Lord whom doesn’t simply make demands of us, but whom walks with and among us, empowering us to forgive and be forgiven, to turn back from our wandering and to meet him again even in the midst of our imperfection.
The Rev’d Armando Ghinaglia
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany
February 9, 2020
“Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
For a concept that’s so utterly at the heart of all of Scripture, I have to admit that “righteousness” is not a word that crosses my lips all that often. Plenty of other concepts do: love, wisdom, hope, even justice. But righteousness hardly does—and I suspect that’s true for most of us, too—unless we’re talking about someone who’s being self-righteous, or someone who’s showing righteous anger.
The former is pretty universally awful. We don’t mean anything nice when we say someone is self-righteous. They’re smug. They’re condescending. They think they’re right, or morally superior, even when they’re not.
The latter, I imagine, isn’t all bad. Jesus himself evinces righteous anger when people sometimes. As he prepares to heal a man’s hand on the Sabbath, Jesus he asks the religious authorities whether it is lawful or not to heal on the Sabbath. Their silence provokes his anger, and he goes on to heal the man anyway.
On the other hand, the two aren’t mutually exclusive. A person can be self-righteous in others’ eyes, and yet believe himself to be righteously indignant in his own. As someone who’s grappled with this before, I can tell you from my own experience that it’s not always easy to tell when righteous anger is righteous, and when “righteous” anger is really a cloak for self-righteousness. After all, seeing red is usually incompatible with seeing clearly.
I dwell on the word “righteousness” because it’s both utterly central to all our readings today and because it’s often foreign to our day-to-day vocabulary outside the two contexts I just described. And to see the word “righteousness” through that minimal and relatively impoverished lens hardly does justice to the vision of the good life that the Scriptures evoke.
The reason is that the Scriptures in Greek most often use one word—δικαιοσύνη—to talk about what our translations call “righteousness” and “justice.” As a Spanish speaker, this strikes me as a peculiarly Anglophone problem. Like the Greek and even like the Hebrew much of the time, many other languages use the same word to describe both concepts: justice.
That we’ve translated one word in two ways isn’t always a problem, of course. Words take on different meanings in different contexts. And that is true for how we talk about righteousness and justice in English as the two words appear in Scripture. Righteousness generally refers to God, or to some divine standard; justice refers principally to our (often imperfect) relations to our fellow human beings.
But the fact that our biblical translations distinguish between them gives me pause, and it’s not because the translators are wrong as to some arcane matter that makes priests and biblical studies professors to stay up at night.
No, what worries me is this: if we have no other way of talking about righteousness than to talk about self-righteousness or righteous anger, we won’t be able to understand what it means for us to be righteous or to pursue righteousness. We’ll get caught on the horns of holy hypocrisy and incessant indignation. Perhaps even worse, we’ll delude ourselves as Christians into thinking that we can do the impossible: that we can be righteous before God without being just toward our neighbors.
That brings us back to our gospel reading today: “Unless your righteousness”—unless your justice—“exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” In some sense, given the context, it seems like Jesus means something like, unless you do what is right in line with God’s commandments, unless you do it more perfectly than the very ones who say they do it perfectly, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. This leads us to an important question, one that takes on special urgency as we face contentious elections this year: What does it mean for us to be righteous before God?
Jesus’s words in the gospel reading today are fairly similar to his words elsewhere, in the gospel of Luke: “Woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and herbs of all kinds, and neglect justice and the love of God; it is these you ought to have practiced, without neglecting the others.” For Jesus, loving God is inseparable from justice, because our friendship with God depends on our loving what God loves. And most broadly these are the two commandments to which God calls us in that friendship: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” And “love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus relates the two commandments to one another in this way: “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’” These lines turn on this one word: mercy. “Be merciful,” Jesus says, “just as your Father is merciful.”
And God’s mercies are countless. All that we are and all that we have comes from God. What more can we give the one who made heaven and earth, who made us in all our wonder? And if that’s true just for our very being in the world—“for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life”—how much more true that is for “the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ; for the means of grace and for the hope of glory”? On what altar could we ever make a sacrifice that remotely adds anything to God’s goodness or mercy?
No sacrifice would ever be enough but what God asked us to make—and this is the one thing that God desires from us: “continually [to] offer a sacrifice of praise to God,” “the fruit of lips that confess his name,” and “to do good and to share what [we] have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.”
In other words, we are called first and foremost to love God—and out of that love for God, we are called to turn away from our selfishness and injustice and instead to imitate God, the God whose mercies never end, by loving our neighbors with that same mercy. This is the justice—the righteousness—to which God beckons us.
None of this is incompatible with Paul’s words that “The one who is righteous will live by faith.” In the scriptural imagination, faith does indeed make it possible for us to be right before God, in large part because it’s faith that allows us to know God and know what God loves, that we might in turn love God and love what God loves. And once we do, the Scriptures are also abundantly clear: “the only thing that counts is faith working through love,” for “faith apart from works is barren” since “a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.”
Our other readings from today should dispel any doubt about this. “The righteous,” we hear in the psalm, “will be kept in everlasting remembrance.” Why? Because they are “generous in lending,” they “manage their affairs with justice,” “they have given freely to the poor.” In sum, they “are merciful and full of compassion.”
And in the book of the prophet Isaiah, we hear God’s call to mercy in righteousness and justice most clearly. “Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins.” And what are the sins? That they’ve stopped worshipping God? No, for “day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God.” We fast, they say, and we humble ourselves—and that’s all great as far as it goes—but God makes clear that this isn’t “the fast that I choose,” that it’s not what is “acceptable to the Lord.” Instead:
Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
What is righteous before God is inseparable from what is just toward our fellow human beings. And where we face injustice in the world around us, God’s righteousness and justice is inseparable from the mercy that wills the good of the victim as well as the mercy that wills the repentance of the aggressor.
That is the example we are given throughout Scripture. When Jesus sees the man with the withered hand and asks whether it is lawful to cure on the Sabbath, he does not merely look around with anger. He looks at those around him with grief and sorrow as well—grief for the man who has suffered for so long, and sorrow for his companions’ greater care for the precepts of men than the commandments of God. He looks on them with sorrow in part because their silence accepts—it justifies—his continued suffering, and in part because their silence reflects a failure to know love as the one who is Love would be known by us: in mercy, not in sacrifice.
In our own lives, what does it look like to do justice and righteousness in this way? To be merciful and full of compassion? Does it mean giving freely to the poor as we can? Does it mean sharing your bread with the hungry, as the Community Soup Kitchen here does day in and day out? And beyond our relationship with other individuals, what does it mean more broadly in our relationships with others as mediated by the laws and norms we adopt in our life together in this city and in this nation?
As we get closer and closer to Lent, to a season of almsgiving, fasting, and penitence, may we prepare to undertake those practices knowing full well that they point, not to our own righteousness, a righteousness that boasts in our own works, but to the merciful God who has given us all that we have and who asks us, in return, to give to those whom we have wronged as people and as a society our resources, our food, and our true repentance for injustice. That is the sacrifice that is pleasing to God. Then will be fulfilled what is said in the psalms:
Mercy and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Truth shall spring up from the earth, and righteousness shall look down from heaven.
Amen.
Ms Angela Shelley
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Presentation of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple
February 2, 2020
Lord, you now have set your servant free
to go in peace as you have promised;
For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior,
whom you have prepared for all the world to see:
A Light to enlighten the nations,
and the glory of your people Israel.
It probably began as just an ordinary day at the temple. After all every day is 40 days after somebody’s birth. It was an ordinary day that became extraordinary. Mary went to the temple as part of the ritual purification following childbirth, and brought Joseph and Jesus along. Such a tiny baby, Jesus still swaddled and nestled against his mother’s body on that 40th day.
Then something strange happened. Or maybe we should say, something else strange happened because the last 40 days had been full of strangeness – giving birth in the stable with the mysterious midwife; those shepherds who arrived that night as if they were family; and those wise men who hosted the oddest baby shower ever. Nothing had been ordinary since the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary those months ago to announce that she was having a baby.
Now it’s forty days since that baby was born and Mary bundles him up and takes him with her to the temple. And there Simeon appears, one more strange man, an old man, “righteous and devout”; led by the Holy Spirit to the temple that day. He’s been watching and waiting for the fulfillment of the promise of the Holy Spirit that he would not see death until he had seen the Messiah.
He’d been waiting and watching for a long time; it must have been years. Hoping the promise would be fulfilled; making extra trips to the temple just in case this was the day. Then suddenly it is the day.
I’ve always imagined that Simeon’s eyesight was poor in his old age, that he could barely make out the figures before him. But he somehow saw– by the power of the Holy Spirit – somehow knew that he had seen the Savior, the Light shining in the darkness.
So Simeon reached out his arms and received the infant Jesus. All his waiting and watching, all his hopes were fulfilled. His name, “God has heard” is at last realized. So he began praising God with words we still sing today:
Lord, you now have set your servant free
to go in peace as you have promised;
For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior,
whom you have prepared for all the world to see:
A Light to enlighten the nations,
and the glory of your people Israel.
Even in the dim light of the temple, with Simeon’s faded vision, the “Light to enlighten the nations” shone brightly. Simeon’s hopes – the hopes of the whole world – were fulfilled at last. Praise, blessing, and prophecy poured forth from Simeon.
I have a small icon of this scene: Mary is at the center, clad in blue, of course, holding the infant Jesus on her lap. Joseph stands over her left shoulder and at the bottom is Simeon, kneeling and bending toward Jesus who has his hand on Simeon’s head in a gesture of blessing. Simeon holds Jesus’ tiny foot and kisses it.
When I shared this icon with the children in Church School, they noticed this detail. One of them asked, “Eww! Why’s he kissing his feet?!”
“Oh,” I said, “Baby feet are sweet; people love to kiss baby feet.”
“Well, you wouldn’t want to kiss mine!,” exclaimed one of the children.
The others readily agreed.
“Besides,” I continued, “he’s kissing Jesus’ feet to worship him. Because this isn’t just a baby with sweet feet. He, this tiny, squirming baby, is Very God of Very God.”
So Simeon kisses Jesus’ feet and worships him with all his being. He at last has seen salvation.
Mary and Joseph are amazed at these words of praise. But Simeon isn’t seeing a vision, for there on the margins of the temple, another voice joins in the praise. Anna the prophet, the elderly widow who’s lived at the temple for many years, praying and fasting. She too realizes what she’s seen, who she’s seen. Very God of Very God.
Like Simeon, Anna cannot keep silent. She “talked about the child to all who were looking for the liberation of Jerusalem.” I imagine Anna talking about “the child,” about Jesus, not just that day, but every day, every day for the rest of her life. Because she's seen salvation, and that's all she can talk about.
I imagine, that like the women at the empty tomb who were the first to proclaim the resurrection, I imagine that Anna continued to proclaim the news of the Savior she had seen. Because she's seen salvation, and that's all she can talk about. We too have seen the Savior. We too have been set free. Perhaps not to die, but to live, to live into our highest vocation, the vocation of praising God.
We too have seen the Savior and we have been set free to praise God, to share the Light that enlightens the nations, to tell all who are looking for liberation that salvation has come. Everywhere we go, people are looking for light to enlighten the darkness of our world. Some are waiting and watching, watching in hope. Others long for light, but dare not hope.
There’s so much darkness in our world – and not just the darkness of midwinter. Sometimes it seems the darkness is overcoming the light. But we who’ve encountered the Light of the World have hope, hope that the light will overcome the darkness.
There’s so much fear in our world. Both young and old, citizens and immigrants, conservatives and liberals. It seems like everyone is afraid. Everyone is wishing for something different, for true peace. But only a few dare to hope, to wait and watch in hope, to act in hope.
As Fr Stephen frequently reminds us, hope is our vocation. Waiting in hope, watching in hope, acting in hope. It’s what we are called to do as followers of Christ. We are called to hope, to look beyond the current darkness, to claim the light of Christ, to shine the light of Christ, to be the light. We’re called to join Simeon and Anna in praise and thanksgiving, in proclaiming that Christ has come, that Christ is the light of the world.
For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior,
whom you have prepared for all the world to see:
A Light to enlighten the nations.
Because Christ is the light of the world, the light that shines in the darkness, we process today with candles and we bless candles to use in our worship and to take home from this holy place back to the holy places of our everyday lives as we seek to bear the light of Christ in our everyday lives.
We admire the witness of Simeon and Anna and hold them up as icons of faithfulness. But they probably were ordinary people like us, people who loved God and who over time developed muscles of faith and faithfulness.
Faith is both a gift and the result of habit. “The Holy Spirit was upon Simeon” and Simeon responded to the Spirit’s guidance. Anna “worshiped night and day with fasting and prayer.”
They both inhabited the temple, the place of public worship, the place where their individual faith could be strengthened in community, because even people gifted in faith need the support of community.
We too need community to strengthen our faith and witness. We need community to help us listen for the voice of the Spirit and to give us courage to follow the Spirit. We need the prayers of our community and we need to join in the prayers of our community. Those prayers give hope and light in ways we cannot even grasp.
We encounter Jesus, the light of the world, the salvation of the world, in prayer, in community, in service, and in the sacraments
In an act more intimate than Simeon receiving Jesus in his arms, more intimate even than his kissing the foot of Christ, we receive body of Christ in the Eucharist, we take his body into our bodies that we may become the body of Christ in this place and in the world.
In the mysteries of the sacraments and in the holy boredom of the daily office, in the mundanity of everyday life, we encounter Christ; we meet him in ordinary and extraordinary ways. The question becomes how we are going to respond to this encounter, what we’re going to do about it.
I want to challenge you to bear the light of Christ with joy and thanksgiving; to faithfully share the hope that is ours; to dare to be guided by the Holy Spirit; and to tell others how you encounter Jesus, the Savior…the Light to enlighten the nations.
Amen.
The Rev’d Deacon Samuel Vaught
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Second Sunday after the Epiphany
January 19, 2020
“I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Well, it’s winter in New Haven—for at least this weekend. And while January has been surprisingly kind to us so far, we know what this time of year means for us here in the Northeast—cold mornings, gray days, and those dark, dark nights. I will never forget my first winter in New Haven, in 2016/2017, when I moved here to live in Saint Hilda’s House. It was the kind of winter that made spring feel like a surprise—a genuine miracle—when it finally arrived. Growing up in the Midwest, I was used to the cold, and the snow, but what I was not prepared for was the dark—those dark evenings here on the other side of the time zone from Indiana, where the sun had already gone to sleep by the time I would leave IRIS at five in the afternoon and walk back home here to 84 Broadway. Light had never felt more precious to me than it did that winter. And to be honest, after three more New Haven winters, the onset of the dark still catches me off guard, and spring still feels like a miracle.
With so much of its history in the northern hemisphere, it’s no accident that the Church focuses a lot on light at this time of year—we need it. Advent, with its wreath of lights, giving way to candlelit Christmas Eve masses, giving way to Epiphany, to the bright, shining star that led the wise men to Jesus’ home. In two weeks we’ll bless candles and celebrate the Presentation of the infant Jesus in the temple in Jerusalem—Candlemas—falling nearly halfway between the darkest day of the year and the first day of spring. At all times of year, but especially now, the Church proclaims light in the darkness.
To the world at this dark time of year comes a light— a light to this city, a light to this region, a light to the nations. At this dark time of year comes Jesus. Jesus comes as an Israelite, out of Israel—from God’s chosen people, from the people who are called as a whole to be a light to the nations. We know from Isaiah’s prophecy, and from the entire Old Testament, of Israel’s call to be this light. “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified,” God tells his people. And as Christians, followers of the Messiah of Israel, we proclaim that in Jesus, this light from God’s people has shined, has shined for all people, for all nations, for every person in this dark world. Isaiah continues, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” Yes, Jesus comes for his people Israel, but he comes also for the Gentiles—for those in the northern hemisphere and those in the southern. For those in the east and for those in the west.
And in the Gospel of John, right at the beginning, John the Baptist, like one who has stayed up all night just to get a glimpse of the dawn, like a watchman for the morning, points him out to us—points us to this light: “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” And again the next day, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” Here is your light, wintry Israel. Here is your light, wintry world.
But it’s a funny kind of light, isn’t it? Not quite what we would have expected the light to the nations to look like—surprising, like that distant and miraculous spring. The disciples of John who heard him point this Jesus out go and follow, to see what he’s all about. “Rabbi, where are you staying?” they ask him. “Come and see” is all they get. No itinerary, no manifesto, no agenda. Just an invitation—an invitation to come, and see, and stay with him. One of them, Andrew, brings along his brother Simon, soon to be Peter. And when they get up the next day, it’s time to go—to Galilee, to a wedding where strange things will happen with water and wine. And then to Jerusalem, to a life on the road. “Rabbi, where are you staying?” Not in one place, seems to be the answer. “Come and see.”
So they do. They come and see this light, always on the move, never still, showing up in the most unexpected places. Befriending sinners, eating with tax collectors and prostitutes, touching lepers, conversing with Gentiles—Samaritans, even—at a well. They come and they see this light break rules—like heal on the Sabbath—do mind-blowing things—like feed five thousand people with just some bread and some fish. They hear this light speak in funny ways—I am the good shepherd, I am the bread of life, I am the vine, and you are the branches. They witness this light that cannot be contained, that refuses to let all the things the world cares too much about—like propriety, or class, or ethnic distinction, or even the rule of law—get in its way to send out light and warmth and truth to the darkest, coldest corners of this wintry world. They witness this light stretch out its arms on a cross, to draw the whole world to itself. To give itself completely, so that there may be no more darkness.
On you too, this light has shined. To this winter morning, to this city, to this very place, the light of Jesus Christ has come. And the thing about this light—it’s likely just as unexpected, likely just as unusual, likely just as offensive or scandalous here as it was in Galilee all those years ago. For you see, the light of Jesus has a way of showing up where we least expect it. Like in the face of a neighbor living on the street, whom we’d rather ignore. Or in a conversation with that stranger who’s been quite literally taking a stand for peace every Sunday for years on the other of this east wall. Or in that tired and frustrated commuter behind you at the stop light, about to lose their patience. Light in the line at the Community Soup Kitchen, in fellowship over a hot meal. Light in a circle of people, supporting one another through addiction and recovery. Light in a word of scripture that you suddenly hear differently or for the very first time when the lector reads it. In a hug or a handshake at the peace. In a small piece of bread in your hand and a small sip of wine on your lips. Light. All around you, even in the January darkness. Light. Inside you. In your body, on your skin, in your eyes.
“Rabbi, where are you staying?” we might ask him ourselves. “Come and see.” Come and see where our Lord might be calling you outside of these walls. When mass is over, when the business of the annual meeting is adjourned, when the lunch dishes have been cleared away, come, or go, rather, and see. See where he is staying in your life, where he is staying in your neighborhood, where he has set up shop. Light a candle. Follow the star. Find that light in the darkness. Find it and shine it on someone who needs it. Let it shine on you.
We’re probably in for another of those dark and gloomy New Haven winters. And while spring is coming in the future, no matter how unbelievable that sounds, light has dawned today. A light to the nations. A light to this city. Won’t you come and see? Amen.
The Rev’d Deacon Raul Ausa-Velazco
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Christmas Day
December 25, 2019
May I speak to you in the name of God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Merry Christmas! Or, as some of you may prefer, Happy Christmas!
As a child learning English, I always found the distinction quite confusing. In my native Spanish, it was simply “Feliz Navidad.” And yet in English, I noted how every year, I would hear “Merry Christmas” at school, from friends, and on television; but our English family friends would always sound just a bit different when they wished us a “Happy Christmas.”
So I was always quite curious about this slight difference in word choice. After all, happy and merry mean the same, or at least similar things. Merry sounds like the more older, more formal word, and some of us might associate formality more with the UK than with the US. And knowing the common religious and linguistic origins of American and English culture, it just seemed strange to me that at some point “merry old England” began to eschew its merriment. So I sat down and did some research.
We know that “merry Christmas” is the older usage—it’s attested to from letters and songs dating back all the way to the Middle Ages, including the still-popular “We Wish you a Merry Christmas.”
We also know that at some point, there was a deliberate move in the 19th century, especially among the upper classes, to down-play the “merry” aspects of English Christmas culture. Indeed, “making merry” was quite different in medieval England than anything we have probably experienced. Their Christmas was not a quiet day of church, presents, and dinner with the family.
Rather, after a season of prayer and fasting through Advent, Christmas was a raucous 12-day festival of drinking, feasting, and dancing in which everything was done to celebrate and imitate the world being turned “upside down.”
In churches, boys were given the mitre and staff of their bishops, and declared ‘boy bishops’ through the festival. More significant was the Lord of Misrule, who was a peasant elected by lots to be in charge of the revelries of Christmastide, who would then lead the poor peasantry in drunkenly parading to the doors of the rich to demand that they pay “tribute” or taxes, as lords did throughout the rest of the year. Often there was a tacit threat of violence should they refuse. It was for these reasons that the celebration of Christmas was banned by Puritans and Congregationalists in Connecticut and New England, in some places up until the 1800s.
Yet all of this-- That the old orders were now inversion of old orders, heeding of children, the poor drinking and eating their fill, the wealthy and powerful paid tribute to lowest among them--
All of this was to celebrate the amazing reversal and inversion, the turning-upside-down of world that had already occurred, and which John describes in this morning’s gospel.
Unlike Matthew and Luke, John doesn’t offer us a narrative of Jesus’ birth, despite the fact that he almost certainly had come across the Matthean and Lucan narratives. We don’t get any angels, shepherds, or wise men. There’s no shining star or dramatic flights in and out of Egypt. Instead, he offers an amazingly beautiful piece of poetry that has become so beloved and so central to us Christians that for centuries it was read at the end of every mass, as we do in this parish during high mass in Advent.
What is it about these words that moves us so? What is it about this message that led our forebears in the faith to forget the many cares of their lives and party for 12 straight days as if the world had suddenly been transformed?
Echoing the words that begin the Book of Genesis, “In the Beginning,” John brings us back to the beginning of the human story. In the beginning, God created a perfect order that he called “good,” an order in which all creation lived in harmony and humankind walked with and shared their life with God. Then, through sin, we fell away from that perfect creation and became separated not only from God, but from each other. Time and time again, God called us back to that life which had been intended for us: through the law, through the prophets, through God’s very voice coming down from the heavens. And yet time, and time again, we failed to listen and seemed to fall even farther away from the Creator’s loving embrace.
And yet our God never gives up or abandons us—instead, God decides to do something new. God decides that if we will not come to God, God will come down to us.
This is the turning point in the biblical redemption arc:. This is the moment when God reaches out Godself and does that which we have been unable and unwilling to do—in Christ, God bridges the gap between heaven and earth and begins the renewal of all creation. This blessed morning is the beginning of the miracle of salvation whereby this same Christ by his cross and resurrection will save and transform the world!
And this is the great joy and hope of Christmas: that while we sit in darkness, the light comes to us and even all the darkness of the world cannot overcome it. That though we live in a world blighted by sin, suffering, and injustice, God does not leave us to fend for ourselves, but breaks into it and renews and reorders it. God gives us God’s very self—all powerful, almighty, and omnipotent, in a weak, vulnerable, precious child, that we might adore him, fall in love with him, and give ourselves to God in return.
Orthodox Christians sometimes critique Western Christians, and especially Anglicans, for our emphasis on Christmas as our most-celebrated holy day, rather than Easter. We might think they have a fair point, especially when we compare our rich history of Christmas carols and Christmas Eve celebrations with the fact that The Episcopal Church didn’t even have an authorized Easter Vigil liturgy until the 1970s. But when we read and meditate on St. John’s prologue, when we consider the amazing thing that occurs this blessed morning and all that will come after it, when we realize that this marks the beginning of the new creation that will be heralded in by this blessed child, perhaps we can be excused for our excitement! And perhaps we may even wonder why we don’t do more in our own time to make merry and celebrate the fact that this morning, God has indeed turned the world upside down.
In the words of John Sullivan Dwight,
Long lay the world in sin and error pining
Till he appear’d and the soul felt its worth
A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn….
Truly he taught us to love one another;
His law is love and his gospel is peace.
Chains shall he break for the slave is our brother;
And in his name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we
Let all within us praise his holy name.
Amen.
Merry Christmas.
The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Eve of the Feast of the Nativity
December 24, 2019
One of the great joys of the Christmases of my childhood was riding in the backseat of the station wagon with my family to look at Christmas lights in the neighborhoods of our town. We’d drive miles to see a light display--and there were some spectacular ones. One of my favorites was Miss Betty Humphrey’s house. Miss Betty was the tax commissioner, and she lived nearby in an inconspicuous ranch home with a big front yard. Every Christmas she’d put together a light show that had cars lined around the block. Each year we’d ride by to see what Miss Betty had put out for Christmas decorations. Our childhood delight was never disappointed at Miss Betty’s.
There were lights all over her house, twinkling along the eves and around the doors and window frames. The shrubbery were covered in colored lights and there were yard signs that gleamed “Noel!” and “Merry Christmas!” There was not one but two lighted nativity scenes--with Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus in a manger lit up from within, glowing with the optimistic promise of electric Christmastide. One year there was a camel. And always, alongside the figures at the manger, somehow Frosty the Snowman and Santa Claus crept in as well.
It was a delightful spectacle to behold--and my joy and anticipation approaching Miss Betty’s, waiting our turn in the long line of cars snaking around the block, was matched only closely by the disappointment at how quickly the scenes moved by--and how far away they soon were in the back widow of the station wagon.
The electric glow of Christmas promise faded as we pulled away--and as we went in search of other, lesser, light displays.
I am grateful for Miss Betty and her gift to the community--the joy and hope that she displayed in the extravagant decorations she brought to her front yard each year. My heart is still warmed, and I get that soft fuzzy feeling when I think about it.
I have a warm feeling about our own crèche at the font, at the back of the church--the grotto-like shelter, the stable with manager and animals, the little dog, the holy family, and the shepherds and their sheep--and the little infant Jesus in the manger.
It’s a feeling that I always associate with the angels--their song of “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”
Miss Betty’s crèche scene however, and indeed our own, didn’t have any angels. Maybe they’re too hard to re-create--maybe they don’t lend themselves to polystyrene molding and internal illumination. Maybe they’re too beautiful and awesome to form into something so earth-bound. But they weren’t there. And so I’ve been thinking about angels this past week. And about that association, that feeling, of “peace on earth” that I’ve had with them for all these years--that warm soft glow we may feel at Christmastide.
Last Sunday I assisted in Sunday School as Angela Shelley taught, and we told the story of the angel Gabriel’s visit to Joseph--just as Gabriel had visited Mary--God’s messenger telling Mary and Joseph about the child that was to be born, the very Son of God. Angela reminded the children of something Mother Kathryn has taught them--that whenever angels show up, they begin their heralding, their announcement, with a reassurance:
Fear not.
Gabriel said it to Mary. Gabriel said it to Joseph. The angel of the Lord--probably Gabriel again--says it to the shepherds out in the fields with their sheep. Fear not! For behold, I bring you tidings of great joy!
Why is Gabriel so concerned with fear? Is it that an angel is terrible and awesome to behold? That’s certainly likely. I suspect angels are far more fierce and terrifying than the soft things we pin to our Christmas trees and send in our greeting cards--the Hallmark imaginings of Christmas joy and peace.
But I also suspect that something quite different is going on. What if the angel knows that the shepherds--that Mary--that Joseph--that you and I--are already afraid?
What if the experience of fear is not related to the appearance of the angel--after all, an angel has no will of its own; it is only a messenger, doing the will of God. What if the experience of fear is instead about the knowledge of evil in the world?
In the story from our beginning, the scriptures of the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil and, armed with this knowledge, suddenly know shame. They are cast out of the garden. Do they feel fear?
Certainly the shepherds knew a hard life. On the margins of society, living rough with the sheep, they inhabited the open spaces, protecting their sheep--sources of wool and of food. They would have been poor at best in a land occupied and controlled by the wealthy.
Augustus, away in Rome, has called for all the world to be taxed--all the known world--and so Joseph, a carpenter, a laborer, takes his pregnant fiancée, up to Bethlehem. There’s not even room there for a place to stay, and so they end up with the animals. Joseph was afraid--what would people say? Mary was pregnant and they weren’t even married yet! Mary was afraid--she was a young pregnant girl who couldn’t even explain rationally how things had gotten to this state. A visit from an angel? A child who was to be born because it was the will of God? She had been caught up in the action of God’s own Holy Spirit, at work in her life--unpredictably, astonishingly, amazingly. And fearfully.
The Jewish world, all of Palestine, was full of fear. People on the edges of the empire, taxed by the Roman government far away, their land occupied, their temple within mere decades destroyed. To hear the historian Josephus tell it, the streets of Jerusalem ran with blood around the time of the fall of the Temple--even with Josephus’s characteristic exaggeration, things were not good. There was division, strife, turmoil in the land. People were afraid.
And aren’t we, too, living in an age of fear? Of division? In a time of wealth and prosperity the likes of which have never been known before, the fabric of our society is still torn by fear. One part of our land is certain we’re encountering a constitutional crisis in our government; another is certain that things have never been better with our government--and we are afraid to talk to one another. Our family members, children, loved ones, maybe even our selves suffer in the grips of addiction--or struggle under the loss of employment. Men and women are homeless and hungry in our streets, or groaning under the weight of engines of mass production. Our young children, not unlike the Holy Innocents of Jerusalem, are victims of gun violence. Are we not afraid?
Oh that an angel would come down and proclaim, “Fear not! For behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people!”
And that, friends, is exactly what happened. Two thousand years ago in Bethlehem, into a world as broken and sinful as our own, in a time as precarious and treacherous as our own.
An angel came down--to proclaim the truth from above--that God’s love was made flesh and dwells among us.
That God, God’s own very self, has come into this world--not in the soft electric glow of manufactured candlelight--but in the agony and bloody sweat of struggle and despair.
That God’s own Son has come among us--to bring hope, transformation, and healing.
That God is reconciling all things to God’s own good purposes--to God’s own self.
That’s why the angel brings this message--Fear not.
That’s why Jesus says the same thing -- over and over again to his disciples. The thing we hear over and over again in scripture. Fear not!
The peace and joy we feel in our hearts this Christmas season is real, but it’s not because of the light up figures, or the kindness of strangers, or the gifts we’ve given one another--though those things can be signs that point to peace and goodwill. That warm feeling of joy is not just because of the song of the angels, though they point to its source.
That feeling, friends, is hope. In the midst of a sinful and broken world, hope is breaking forth in us--the hope that not only has God come among us, Emmanuel, but that God is among us even now--in the rocky places, in the grief, in the fear--and that at the manger, and at the cross, we find that God sees us in our sin, in our brokenness, that God sees the sin and evil that breaks our hearts--just as it breaks the very heart of God.
Fear not, the angel says.
Fear not, our Lord says.
God is here. God sees and loves you. And God is with you, even until the end of the age, Jesus says.
That’s the work of the Incarnation--that God comes among us and will not let us go.
Tonight, as you feel the warm glow of the candles, the goodwill and peace of Christ that fill the room, as you experience the presence of Christ in the crèche and in the sacrament of the altar, as you meet Christ in this place and in the loving faces of one another, hold onto that feeling--not as a once-a-year occurrence, but as the reality that perhaps on the other days of the year we have failed to see.
And if you feel despair tonight, or loneliness, anxiety, or desperation, hold fast and know that God is there with you. Emmanuel has come among us and is here. The things that break your heart are the things that break the very heart of God--but God cannot be broken. Not even death can conquer the love that is God--the love that God has for you.
The shepherds heard the song of the angels--Fear not! Glory to God! Peace! And they ran to Bethlehem to meet this infant, this savior of the world, this babe, this Hope made flesh.
That’s why we went back each year to Miss Betty’s yard to see her Christmas lights. It was about more than just the good feeling. It was a promise, at least once a year, that all those cars, streaming around the block, were in it together. We were looking for hope.
And that’s why we’ve come here tonight. To hear again the message of the angels. To see for ourselves that God is faithful. That God is real. That love conquers all things.
Peering out the back of the station wagon, looking up, necks craned back, to see the angels in the night sky, or gazing at this altar--at one another--we are all looking for hope.
And here it is, right in the manger, right at this altar, right in our very hearts.
The Word is made flesh. God’s love has come among us.
Fear not.
Come and adore him.
And take that message of hope from this place out into the world.
+
The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Third Sunday of Advent
December 15, 2019
In this homily for the third Sunday of Advent, Gaudete Sunday, the Rector invites us to rejoice in God’s saving work—and reflects that not only does God come among us—but that God draws us ever closer to God—into the reign of God that we call Heaven. Stir us up, O Lord, and draw us to yourself!
The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost
November 17, 2019
In this homily for the twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost, the Rector invites us to consider how God uses our lives and our work to invite us into an awareness of God’s kingdom. Lifting up the witness of Saint Hilda, the deaconesses who named their House after her, and the present day Hildans and parishioners of Christ Church, he reflects on how God uses our own gifts to show God’s kingdom come near.
The Rev’d Armando Ghinaglia
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost
November 10, 2019
Under the Shadow of God’s Wings
Keep me, O Lord, as the apple of an eye; hide me under the shadow of thy wings.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Our psalm this morning is a striking song—in the psalmist’s words, “hear the right.”[i] We ask the Lord to “hearken unto” our “prayer,”[ii] to “visit” our “heart,” to “prove” us, to see that there is “no wickedness” in us.[iii] With the psalmist, we call to the Lord for protection: “Show thy marvelous loving-kindness, thou that art the Saviour of them which put their trust in thee.”[iv]
And what, one might ask, does the Lord’s loving-kindness look like? “Keep me as the apple of an eye; hide me under the shadow of thy wings from the ungodly that trouble me,” from those who “compass me round about to take away my soul.”[v]
“Keep me as the apple of an eye; hide me under the shadow of thy wings.”[vi]
The verse is beautiful, and for over a thousand years, those words have been part of the service of Compline. Still, the first half is admittedly strange, even to our ears. “Hide me under the shadow of thy wings” seems obvious enough. But “keep me as the apple of an eye”? In our day, “apple of your eye” or “apple of my eye” probably means something like the thing we love or cherish most, and so the verse comes across as “Keep me in your sight like the one you love most.” And that’s not a bad prayer by any means. But it’s not what the psalmist means here. The Hebrew, Greek, and Latin all render the phrase “keep me as the pupil of your eye.”
In that context, the parallelism here makes more sense: keep us safe, the way that people shield their eyes from damage; hide us away, the way a bird shields its young from danger. In both cases: Lord, gather us in; hold us so close to you—to your mind and to your heart—that we might, as it were, become one with you.
As Christ himself says, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, . . . how often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.”[vii]
Now, it may well be our prayer much of the time—if not most of the time—that the Lord would hide us under the shadow of his wings, that God would “defend[] [us] from all adversities which may happen to the body and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul.”[viii] In a broken and sinful world, we could hardly pray otherwise.
The circumstances of this life—financial hardships, relationship problems, health issues, whatever they may be—lead us to pray that God would guard and protect us. Lord, help me have enough to pay my bills this month. Lord, help me love my partner or my parents or my siblings the way I want to and the way I should. Lord, help me get through this pain or this anxiety or this sickness. All of these are good prayers, even necessary, because they lay bare the deepest desires of our hearts and they remind us that we are utterly dependent on God for all “good things.”[ix]
But there is more to God protecting us than merely making sure we live a long and undisturbed life here on earth or that we receive all the material or physical blessings we desire. The end of our psalm from today doesn’t make it into the lectionary, but it points in that very direction: O Lord, “deliver my soul from the ungodly,” “which have their portion in this life,”[x] and “I will behold thy presence in righteousness, and when I awake up after thy likeness, I shall be satisfied with it.”[xi]
To be hidden with God isn’t simply to be protected. It’s to be hidden with Christ. And as the disciples knew well, being hidden with Christ doesn’t mean that no harm will ever happen to us.[xii] Sometimes it means being hidden with him in his healing and miracles; sometimes it means being hidden with him in his suffering and death, to pass through the “refiner’s fire” and the “fullers’ soap.”[xiii] In ways we may not appreciate fully in this life and may only understand in the next, God the Father has already hidden us under the shadow of the wings of Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.
As the book of Deuteronomy has it, not only does the “eagle stir up its nest and hover over its young”; it also “spreads its wings, takes [] up [its young], and bears them aloft on its pinions.”[xiv] In that way, we find in Deuteronomy, “the Lord alone guided Israel . . . and set him atop the heights of the land.”[xv]
The Spirit has stirred our hearts to seek God’s face in Jesus Christ.[xvi] And by water and the Spirit, Jesus has gathered us together[xvii] in his body,[xviii] and in the shadow between the Ascension and the Second Coming,[xix] our “life is hidden with Christ in God.”[xx] More than that, God has “borne [us] on eagles’ wings and brought [us] to [him]self.”[xxi] For Jesus himself “stretched out his arms upon the cross”[xxii]; he has taken us up and borne us aloft with him[xxiii]—along with all our griefs and sorrows and burdens[xxiv]—so that they, like the wounds in his hands and feet and side, might be transformed,[xxv] and so that we, like him, might live forever.[xxvi]
Hiddenness with Christ in God bears with it the seed of the promise that suffering does not have the final word—that if “we suffer with him,” we will “also be glorified with him.”[xxvii] For we who are “buried with him in baptism” are “also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised Christ from the dead.”[xxviii]
Perhaps only then will we be “satisfied,” “behold[ing] [God’s] presence”[xxix] “face to face.”[xxx] For then we shall know all things fully, “even as [we] have been fully known.”[xxxi]
This is God’s “marvelous loving-kindness,”[xxxii] and this is our hope.[xxxiii]
Keep us, O Lord, as the apple of an eye. Hide us under the shadow of thy wings. Amen.
[i] Ps. 17:1.
[ii] Id.
[iii] Ps. 17:3.
[iv] Ps. 17:7.
[v] Ps. 17:8-9.
[vi] Id.
[vii] Mt. 23:37; Lk. 13:34.
[viii] BCP 218 (Collect for the Third Sunday in Lent).
[ix] Mt. 7:11.
[x] Ps. 17:13-14 (emphasis added).
[xi] Ps. 17:16.
[xii] See Ps. 10:6.
[xiii] Mal. 3:2.
[xiv] Cf. Deut. 32:11.
[xv] Deut. 32:12-13.
[xvi] See Ps. 27:11; 1 Cor. 2:10; 2 Cor. 4:6.
[xvii] See Jn. 3:5; Tit. 3:5.
[xviii] See Eph. 5:30.
[xix] See Col. 2:17.
[xx] Col. 3:3.
[xxi] Ex. 19:4.
[xxii] BCP 362 (Eucharistic Prayer A).
[xxiii] See Eph. 2:6; Col. 3:1.
[xxiv] See Is. 53.
[xxv] See Jn. 20:27.
[xxvi] See 2 Cor. 4:14; Jn. 6:51.
[xxvii] Rom. 8:17.
[xxviii] Col. 2:12.
[xxix] Ps. 17:16.
[xxx] 1 Cor. 13:12.
[xxxi] Id.
[xxxii] Ps. 17:7.
[xxxiii] Cf. 1 Pet. 3:15.
The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
October 20, 2019
In this homily for the nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, the Rector invites us to consider Jacob’s struggle with God—and invites us into our own persistence in the struggle against sin and evil—with a confident hope in God’s goodness that God has already prevailed.
Mr Raul Auza-Velazco
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
October 6, 2019
The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
September 1, 2019
In this homily for the 12th Sunday after Pentecost, the Sunday before Labor Day, the Rector invites us to think of how we value one another—and how we are valued ourselves. Are we slaves to productivity? Or do we recognize ourselves, one another, and all Creation as made in the image of God—beloved by God simply because we exist?
The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
August 25, 2019
In this homily for the 11th Sunday after Pentecost the Rector welcomes the 10th class of Saint Hildans to the parish and invites us all to think about how keeping Sabbath and doing good works is a way to keep God first—to reveal God’s love throughout all the world—God’s love for every last person, every last corner of the world, every last bit of Creation. All is beloved of God. Do our lives reflect this truth? Do our actions reflect this reality? Together let us proclaim the love of God in all that we do and say, with our lives, with our very selves.
The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
August 18, 2019
In this homily for the 10th Sunday after Pentecost the Rector invites us to consider that perhaps the divisions in our society and in our world are merely the last gasp of death-dealing systems of oppression that are crumbling in the face of the kingdom of God that has drawn near in the presence of Jesus Christ. We’re invited to have hope and to take courage: to proclaim the values of the kingdom—to live as though it’s come near—and in the surety of the promise of Jesus Christ that it is coming.