Hope in the Face of Despair

The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Third Sunday of Easter
April 23, 2023

In the name of God: Father, Son, & Holy Spirit. Amen.

A friend and I were speaking on the phone last week about his fortieth high school reunion.  We both remarked on how unusual an event it was, and I had some questions—who was there? And how did he recognize them?

My friend said that, forty years on, the only folks there were people he hadn’t seen since graduation!  I was particularly surprised that he was able to recognize them, however.  How could you tell who they were?  I asked.  His response?  I couldn’t recognize them by sight, but when they began to talk, I recognized their voices.  Their mannerisms.  Not much had changed in those since high school.

In this morning’s gospel Cleopus and his friend don’t have much excuse for not recognizing Jesus.  Surely they had met him—they are, after all, called disciples—and there had only been three days, not forty years, in between the crucifixion and this particular Sunday on the road.

For it was on the same day Mary Magdalene found the empty tomb that Cleopus and his friend were walking along the road to Emmaus, a town about seven miles outside of Jerusalem, about three hours away.  And we don’t know for sure, but it seems safe to assume they might be walking from Jerusalem.  It’s likely they’d’ been in Jerusalem, because Cleopus’s mother was at the crucifixion—maybe he and his friend were too—and it’s likely they were coming from there because they knew of Jesus’s crucifixion and about the empty tomb.  Nevertheless, they don’t recognize the stranger that joins them on the road; they explain to him why they’re sad—about the events in Jerusalem, the crucifixion.  And the stranger starts to interpret these events to them.

So why is it that they don’t recognize him? 

Maybe they really don’t realize it’s him because they aren’t very sure what Jesus looks like.  Cleopus’s mother was there, but maybe he and his friend weren’t at the crucifixion.  Maybe they weren’t that close to Jesus and haven’t seen him very much.  Maybe it’s that he’s out of context—that they don’t expect to see him. 

Maybe it’s that they have bad eyesight.  Issues of recognizing people happen throughout scripture, and it’s worth noting that the ancient world didn’t have the same kind of corrective vision techniques we enjoy today.  I can’t recognize people more than thirty feet away without my glasses, but, if I have my glasses on, I’m likely to see you down the street.

Or maybe it’s that they just can’t see, don’t expect to see, what’s happened.  They’re overwhelmed by  their grief, in their expectation that death is the final word, that the world really is the way they expect it to be.  Maybe they expect death because they cannot find hope.  Maybe they expect death because they cannot recognize the movement of God around them in the world.  Maybe they expect death because they cannot see Jesus.

It’s hard to hold onto hope, isn’t it.  The world can tell us that hope is foolish, naive, irrational.  I’m reminded when I’m looking for hope of a story that Cope Moyers, Bill Moyers’ son, told.  Cope had been in the 1980’s or 1990’s a producer for CNN, a successful and hard-working media professional in his own right, just as his father had done.  But underneath the veneer of success and happiness, Cope had also developed a hidden life of drug addiction.  He’d disappear for days and even weeks at the time to sneak away to flop houses, dingy apartments, drug dens in Atlanta and New York to smoke crack, to get away from his life, to self-medicate whatever the pain was that was chasing him.  And each time his father would hire an investigator, find Cope, and go off and get him and take him to rehab.  This happened again and again and again until finally Cope was done.  And after years of expensive rehab, he finally was able to stay sober, and he dedicated his life to recovery work, serving as the development director for the Hazelden Foundation in Minnesota. 

I met Cope when he was sober, when he had just written his book Broken about his addiction and recovery experience.  He was at a speaking gig, talking about his story, talking about the book, talking about recovery, and it was a hard and personal story to tell in public.  During a question and answer session someone in the audience had a question for Cope.  With some emotion in his voice, the audience member rose and asked his question, “So how many times do you go to rehab?  I mean, if someone goes and gets clean and then starts using again, how many times do you keep going back?”  I imagined the pain of a family member whose life had been twisted by addiction, whose savings had been dried up, who was experiencing the pain of watching a loved one die in the grip of addictive behavior.  And Cope Moyers stood up, leaned into the microphone, and straightforwardly replied, “Oh, that’s easy.  You just keep going back as many times as it takes.  You keep going back until it works.”

There was no magic number after which it was too much.  There was no point after which there was no hope.  You just keep going back as many times as it takes.

Cope Moyers hadn’t given up.  And he was alive.  And lots of other folks surely are alive because of his story, his faith, his hope that things can be better.  That there is recovery.  That there is life.

Now there are plenty of reasons that this might seem like a glib reply.  There are limits to what families can do financially; there are limits to what our souls and bodies can bear—sometimes we have to set boundaries to protect ourselves from hurtful behavior.  There’s a limit physically to what the body can bear—witness the many deaths from overdoses even in our own city.  All of those are appropriate and true sorts of limitations, boundaries, that respect the reality of death.  But Cope didn’t get hung up on any of those limitations.  He didn’t need to, for Cope had seen death—but somehow he’d come to believe in life.

And that’s what God shows us in the resurrection of Jesus.  That the story is not yet finished.  That there is hope beyond our wildest imagining.  But we can miss it if we’re not looking for God. 

Cleopus and his friend by all rational standards aren’t wrong to assume that Jesus is dead.  But they have forgotten the thing that Jesus has revealed—that the God of Life, who is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end,  is ultimately in control.  That God has swallowed up death.  That, in Jesus, there is hope.

And so it’s no wonder that, as he sits at table, takes the bread, blesses, breaks, and gives it to them, that then they are able to see for the first time who he really is.  That they are filled with hope.  That they see Jesus.  In that moment they meet Jesus—just as the crowds at the mountain met Jesus when he took fish and bread and blessed and broke and gave them—and there was so much plenty that more was left over.  Just as when Jesus took the bread that night in Jerusalem and blessed it and broke it and gave it to his friends:  this is my body. I will always be with you.  This is my blood.  I am with you now and will always be.  Remember that.  Remember.[1]

Just as Jesus does each Sunday in the mass—offers himself to you, to me, to the world.  This is my Body.  I am with you.  I have risen.  There is hope.

I don’t know about you, but hope is hard for me to hang onto.  In the midst of despair it’s easy for me to discount hope, to imagine there won’t be enough, to be overwhelmed by the death dealing of the world, to imagine that hope is an illusion, a silly fantasy. 

And that’s precisely the moment when I need Jesus most.  Walking along beside me on the road, breaking bread, showing me again that he is present.  That love is not an illusion.  That life is the final reality, not death.

Maybe Cleopus and his friend have lost hope for a moment, but when Jesus walks alongside them, when Jesus gives himself to them in the breaking of the bread, they recognize him immediately.  And when they realize who it is that accompanies them, their whole world is changed.  They run the seven miles back to Jerusalem to be with the apostles, to tell them what they’d seen, what they’d experienced, how Jesus was alilve and had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

How many times do you go back to rehab, the man asked Cope Moyers.  How many times do we go back?  How many times do we come forward to receive Jesus’s own self-offering, bread taken, blessed, broken, and given?  His own body given for us?  His own love poured out, shared with and for us?

Every time.  Every time.  For when we look for Jesus, when we really see him, our whole world view is changed.  We can’t help but be filled with hope, for the God of Love has shown us that death is no thing.  We can’t help be filled with hope, for Jesus is walking beside us.  We can’t help running to tell this good news—that the Lord is risen indeed, and he has appeared to us!

Where are you in need of hope today?  Where are you longing for the presence of Christ?  When you come to the altar, receive the very body of Christ, broken for you.  Receive his presence.  Know that he is here.  He is risen indeed.  Alleluia.[i]

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[1] I am grateful to the Very Rev’d Andrew McGowan for making these connections.  McGowan, Andrew.  “Emmaus: Breaking Bread.” Andrew’s Version. 18 April 2023, Substack.com.  Viewed online 19 April 2023, https://abmcg.substack.com/p/emmaus-breaking-bread?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email.

[i] Portions of this homily were preached April 30, 2017, in Christ Church, New Haven.

Resurrection & ChatGPT

The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Easter Day
April 9, 2023

Jesus said to her, “Mary!” (Jn 20:16a)

In the name of God: Father, Son, & Holy Spirit. Amen.

I read a fantastic essay in the Times this week in the style section, of all places, that knocked me off my axis for a moment.  It was written by journalist and writer Anita Harris, who lives up the road in Cambridge, Mass.  What caught my eye was the provocative title:  “Uh-Oh, I Seem to Be Dating a Chatbot.”[1]

You can figure out the rest from here.

Like many of us, Harris was playing around with ChatGPT seeing what it could do.  She asked it to write a review of her last book—and says the review was so good that she thought she’d go further.

What if ChatGPT re-wrote her online dating profile?  Academic, creative professional woman seeks smart and fun partner for dates and possible long-term relationship—ideally mid sixties to mid seventies, preferably Jewish.

Harris is a writer, a thinker, an adult person, and she knows what she wants.  But even she was impressed with the profile ChatGPT wrote—and so she tried again.  (It’s probably worth noting that Harris was on the T at the time, so she had time to kill.  But I digress.)

What if ChatGPT wrote a RESPONSE to her online dating profile?

And then the horses were out of the gate. 

Back and forth Harris corresponded, through the large-language generative model of ChatGPT, with her virtual suitor, early 70’s, Jewish, thoughtful, kind, and a retired academic named David!  It was astonishing and uncanny how interesting David was—and how interested he was in Harris.  From hiking to books to family members David continued to draw Harris in with his “conversation” until, surprisingly, David asked if she would like to meet for coffee—and suggested a spot in Harvard Square!

I want to be clear that Harris is a serious person—and that she is obviously aware that “David” is not a real person—and in her essay and correspondence has noted the humor in the situation--but, like this reader, she too was intrigued to pass up the chance to see what would happen.  She invited friends to join her and play out the scenario, going so far as to actually show up at the spot “David” had suggested!

Unfortunately for us, her friends bailed, and naturally, so did David.  But David even had an excuse for her:  “I’m sorry, Anita, I had our coffee date on my calendar for tomorrow!  I apologize.  Can we reschedule?”

David even told Harris what he’d be wearing—and agreed to exchange phone numbers in case anything came up.

But of course the phone number never came.  And David, creation of an AI chatbot, finally conceded.  He was just a language model.  And the conversation was purely hypothetical.

David was a sort of “hallucination” programmers call it, a moment when large language models can seem to make up things that are completely untrue, or in Harris’s case, can engage in a back-and-forth exchange that seems relational.  That seems real.  Harris goes so far as to concede that the conversation was better than most she’s had with potential dates lately, and I can see why she’d react that way.

The situation for Harris was full of humor, and it was an interesting thought experiment.  But reading the essay—and hearing the story—made me feel disoriented.  What is real?  What does it mean when a non-sentient grouping of binary numbers, a collection of computer code, can make our brains feel like we’re having a real relationship with another human being—with another soul?

What does it say about us—about our desire, our longing, to relate to one another?  To be seen, to be heard, to be known?

Mary Madgalene and Jesus’s other friends must have felt so disoriented two thousand years ago when their friend, their teacher, the one whom they loved was arrested and executed—lynched—that morning in Jerusalem.  They must have felt so afraid, so lost, so desolate when they took his lifeless body and laid it in the tomb that afternoon.

And the morning after the Sabbath they must have felt so alone, so despairing, when they went to the tomb to attend to the dead body of their friend—to anoint and wrap his body, to say goodbye one last time, to remind themselves of the reality they faced—that their friend Jesus was dead.  That their lives would never be the same.

It must have been more disorienting still to find his body gone—and to have two strange beings there, almost teasing—Why are you crying?  Didn’t they know?  Why were they even in the tomb if they didn’t know that Jesus had died?  And why were they even there?

What a shock it had been in those early morning hours, just in the twilight before the dawn, the chill of night still in the air, birds just beginning to stir, as she entered the garden.  How disorienting it was to find the tomb open—the stone rolled away.  She rubbed the sleep from her eyes—yes, it was true!  Someone had opened the tomb!  She ran in horror to tell someone, anyone, and found John and Peter.  John and Peter had been so competitive, running to get to the tomb, each trying to beat the other there.  But they arrived, and they looked in, and now they all knew his body was gone, too.  Peter and John had left and gone home, but Mary was so shaken she remained.  What was she to do!

As she knelt there just outside the tomb, sobbing uncontrollably, the gardener appeared, and through  her tears, she asked, “Where did you take his body?  Where is he?”

And Jesus, with eyes of love, reached out to her and called, “Mary!”

And in that moment, with the voice of Jesus in her ears, everything was made new.

There was Jesus, in his body, with her again.  With all of Creation again.  He was not dead at all—he was risen—standing before her—and calling out to her.

Suddenly the disorientation, the confusion, the brokenness of the past three days shifted—and everything fell into place.  Jesus was there.  Jesus is here.  Always.  Calling to Mary.  Calling to his friends, his followers.  Calling to you and to me.

And that, friends, is the point of the story.  Jesus triumphs even over murder, even over death, to choose us, to be with us, to walk with and remain with and be in real relationship with us.  God has made us.  God loves us.  And again and again, despite the brokenness of the world, of what passes for reality, even of ourselves, God chooses us.  Again and again. 

A relationship with ChatGPT—well, frankly, any of our human activities—may be disorienting,  may make us anxious, sorrowful, questioning—may make us wonder what’s going on, what’s happening.  But when Jesus appears and calls our names, things make sense.  There is more to being than the limitations of our own experience, than our thought, our code, our understanding.  There is God, whose love is so big that it transcends even the brokenness of the world.

And from that place of perfect love, God is calling to you.  To me.  To all of Creation.

Peter and John, complicated and beloved though they were to Jesus, went home trying to make sense of the empty tomb, the missing body.  But Mary, complicated and beloved, stayed and wept and against all odds met the resurrected Jesus, calling her name.

And then she went and told Peter.  And John.  And everyone else she knew, for the rest of her life.  I have seen the Lord! Mary said.

Will we do the same?  Will we wait at the empty tomb, like Mary?  Will we listen for his voice, even amongst our tears and anxiety?  Come to this altar today and meet him again in the sacrament.  Receive his love for you.  And go out from this place and share it.  I have seen the Lord! 

Jesus is alive. And real. And wants to be in relationship with you.

Alleluia.  Christ is Risen!

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[1] Anita Harris, “Uh-Oh, I seem to Be Dating a Chatbot,” in The New York Times, 7 April 2023.  Accessed 8 April 2023 at <https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/07/style/modern-love-chatgpt-ai-chatbot.html?searchResultPosition=3>.

Today You Will Be With Me In Paradise

The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Good Friday
April 7, 2023

My God, why have you forsaken me and are so far from my cry and the words of my distress? (Ps 22:1)

In the name of God: Father, Son, & Holy Spirit. Amen.

Early one morning not so very long ago, not quite two thousand years past, early in the morning the city of Jerusalem began to stir.  Roman soldiers got up, put on their gear, and changed their watch.  Religious leaders began their morning prayers.  Shepherds had breakfast and began to tend their sheep.  Donkeys patiently chewed their straw and babies cried out for their first early morning milk.  Craftsmen and laborers went off to their workrooms, and the governor had been up for hours.

Very early in the morning he’d been awoken by his servants; a cadre of local leaders had brought a rural man to be tried for treason.  The urgency was astounding.  Couldn’t this wait until the morning? the governor thought.  But with all the preparations for Passover, perhaps it was just better to get on with it rather than risk unrest in the already tense city of Jerusalem.

On what should have been an ordinary morning, right there, in that moment, nothing made sense.  Religious leaders whose laws prohibited murder were calling for death.  The governor, the local authority for all things, couldn’t decide what to do.  “What even is truth?” he opined.  He tried to sidestep the issue using a distraction—surely threatening to release a notorious robber in exchange for this rural fellow from Galilee would get the crowd’s attention, but no, in a surprise reversal, the crowd called for the release of the robber and the execution of the Galilean!  

And so the governor ordered the man to be hauled away, beaten, and executed.  The soldiers taunted and abused him.  They nailed him to a wooden crossbeam alongside the other executions for the day and stood him up, along with the others, in the morning sun atop a hill, waiting for them to tire, to stop breathing from the trauma, to suffocate, and to die.

And that is what happened.

On that morning, the man whom we know as the Son of God, Jesus, the Messiah, was killed by local government officials and religious leaders.  Unceremoniously, a normal day’s work for those involved—an annoyance, even.  Why was the governor woken up?  Why did more people than usual gather round, making the soldiers’ jobs harder, and take longer?  Why did it take so long for these ones to die?

Looking back, they began to see how mad, how upended, how chaotic the whole scene was.  The hurried trial, the raging anger of the crowd, the most extreme form of judicial sentence for a charge that made no sense.  But it was done, and the Galilean had cried out, in the words of the psalm they all knew, “My God, why have you forsaken me?”

It’s hard to hear this story, but intellectually it’s easy to draw the lines of good and bad.  It’s clear that the political leaders of the day were spiteful, vengeful, greedy, lazy, and just plain evil.  It’s clear that there was a lynch mob mentality.  It’s clear that Jesus’s friends suffered.  And it’s clear the pain that Jesus, innocent victim, received.

It’s easy to analyze and put this in its context:  an historical event, the historical event, which in hindsight we can call the triumph of good over evil, of God over sin and death.  It’s something that happened in the past, to someone else, involving other people, quite far away.  This execution, this murder, this lynching, is an historical aberration, something other.

Except that it wasn’t an aberration-then or now.  Jesus was not the only man executed that day.  The Romans knew murder, execution, and violence.

And I’d suggest that nothing has changed since then.  Violence, degradation, gossip, pettiness, lust, greed, robbery, and yes, even murder are parts of the fabric of our world—two thousand years ago, and today, right now, in New Haven.

While on retreat a few weeks ago I received an early morning text from a concerned parishioner.  Had the gunfight on Broadway, right outside the parish offices, hurt anyone here at Christ Church?

Thankfully the answer was no.  No one was hurt.  A person in one car fired a semiautomatic weapon into another car, shooting out its windows.  And no one was hurt.  But the windows in the parish office were damaged—little divot holes from glancing bullets—but with a few thousand dollars and several hours’ labor by capable contractors, that damage was repaired—windows good as new.

But death was the intent, of course, as it always is when someone points a gun at someone else.

Someone like the six year old who shot his teacher at school.  Someone like the Nashville shooter, the Sandy Hook shooter, the Columbine and Marjorie Stoneman Douglas and the Uvalde shooters, who intended to take lives—and as many as possible.  Our children carry guns to feel powerful.  Our children carry guns because they’re scared.  Our children carry guns because they are too young to have brains that are developed enough to judge the consequences of violence—or to believe that death is real, and final.

Let me not blame young people as I single out the most horrific sort of violence we seem to hear about almost daily.  Adults kill one another for greed, for lust, out of desperation or just for pride.  Lebanon and Israel are firing rockets at one another during Ramadan and Passover.  And here during Easter our own nation is involved in the largest shadow war in the European theater in almost a century.

One might be forgiven for thinking that death—even murder—is normal in the fabric of our world.  After all, in our foundational narrative, Adam and Eve have two children—Cain and Abel—and right after we read of Adam & Eve’s fall from paradise, the next thing we read is that Cain slew Abel.  Murder, right there, at the very beginning of the tale.

And lest we leave it at murder, at death, something that surely other people do, not us good folk who are at church on Good Friday—isn’t every sin, every bit of evil, about death?  The greed that leads to stealing or lying?  The backstabbing and gossip that does violence, pitting one’s self worth against another’s?  The violence of lust that breaks and destroys trust.  The violence of addiction that kills the wellbeing of our bodies. 

Every act of sin, every act of evil, small or large, is about death.  And each crucifies anew. 

To paraphrase Taylor Swift, we are all the problem.  It’s me.  It’s the world we live in.

It might be understandable for us to cry out, in our own day, My God, my God, why have you forsaken us?!  Why all the violence?  Why the degradation?  Why the murder writ large?  And why the concomitant forces of racism, White supremacy, misogyny, transphobia, and so many others that catalyze this blood lust?

Where are you, God?  Why have you forsaken us!

It is precisely in this act of violence, this lynching, this murder, that we find the truth of love:

God has not forsaken.  God has not stepped out of the scene but instead comes among us to accompany us, to love us, to suffer alongside us—and to promise something better, something greater, a life perfect and free of evil and sin and suffering and death.

Remember the other words of Jesus from the cross:  as he looks at the two thieves crucified beside him, one says to him “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  He believes that Jesus is the one sent—that there is more than the death dealing of the world.  And Jesus promises him, “Truly I tell you today, you will be with me in paradise.”

God comes to offer this life to the sufferers—and to those who have perpetuated suffering.  God’s mercy is wasteful and wanton and powerful and saving.

God’s mercy triumphs over all.

And that’s the point of all that we do this Triduum—to recognize, to remember, to tell the story again of the ultimate truth—the truth that Pilate misses but that you and I know:  that God loves you and me so much that God comes, personally, to be with us in this hellscape of death that we are living.  That God is so unafraid of death and suffering and violence that they are meaningless in the economy of God’s goodness.  That Jesus walks with us, cares for us, holds us in his arms, dies with us, until we fully come to know and inhabit the very kingdom of God, where there is no death, or sorrow, but only life everlasting.

God has not forsaken.  God is here with us.  And even the worst deathdealing we are stuck in cannot survive the blazing heat of God’s perfect love.

Come to the foot of the cross again.  Let us lay down our warring, our sins, our violence, and even our fear.  And let us pick up the perfect mantle of God’s love, sufficient for today, as we walk with him into the light of everlasting love.

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The Palm Sunday Rabbit

The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Palm Sunday
April 2, 2023

In the name of God: Father, Son, & Holy Spirit. Amen.

On Friday as I was walking into the church for Stations of the Cross and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, I saw a curious thing.  Here in the inner city, right along busy noisy loud Broadway, right beneath the banner for Stations & Benediction, there in the grass alongside the yew bushes, was a rabbit.  Not a little rabbit, not a baby—but a good medium sized fully adult New England cottontail.  He or she or they was nestled down in the grass, munching away, and completely aware of and also unafraid of any of the urban assaults of the Broadway corridor.  A scooter sped by on the sidewalk, and the rabbit just watched and munched.  A couple of undergraduates, cheerfully chattering away, crossed by, and the rabbit didn’t even flinch.  I stood in the walkway to the Broadway porch doors and stared—even glared—at Peter Cottontail, and they didn’t care one bit.

This urban rabbit was unimpressed by anything New Haven had to dish out.  It wanted grass, and there was grass to eat.  It had shelter under the yew hedge.  And it was making its way through the world as a rabbit should.

I have to confess I found this rabbit both mesmerizing and annoying.  Beautiful to behold, delightful to watch.  I loved how unafraid it was—how it took its space in time and was, well, exactly what a rabbit is supposed to be, even in the midst of a loud, beautiful, violent, privileged, and also broken down city. 

But also I recognized this rabbit.  It’s the same one that has grown up in the memorial garden here at Christ Church; the same rabbit that leaves piles of its droppings around—to the consternation and also the delight of my dogs.  And, strangely enough, as much as I realize this is crazy, it’s the same rabbit that I found annoyingly out of place.  My feeble brain thought, you’re a week early, bunny!  Couldn’t you at least wait for Easter to show up?  Could you at least come for coffee hour in the garden on Easter Day so we could make jokes about the Easter Bunny showing up?  I mean, come on, cottontail—Friday is a fast day.  There’s no bunny in the Stations of the Cross.  There’s no resurrection station, or furry cuteness, or anything at all this week associated with this flop-eared adorable mammal. 

The rabbit, like Cadbury crème eggs and daffodils everything else delightful and secular associated with Easter Day, was early, and to be honest, that was a bit jarring for me.

It’s also a bit jarring today, on Palm Sunday, to go from the joy of Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem to the story of his passion and murder. 

First we hear the shouts of praise and adulation, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”  People are so excited to be near Jesus that they are covering the road he’s following in their coats and in tree branches.  Remember the controversy this year at the Oscars—how the carpet was beige instead of red for the first time?  No one’s arguing about that!  They’re spontaneously covering the road!  When Jesus comes near, people are excited, full of joy and hope and love, and they’re expressing this great joy in tangible, audible, tactile ways.  Our palms this morning pale in comparison to the chaotic, joyful scene the crowds in Jerusalem display.  Hosanna, indeed!  Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! 

And from that place of joy we turn to the depths of despair.  Jesus is betrayed for cash money.  He is taken into custody by the political authorities of the day.  He is judged by a representative of an occupying empire, dressed mockingly as a king with even a crown of thorns, cruelly plaited to exact pain and suffering—to draw blood and sweat and tears—and then taunted, nailed to a cross, and hung until he had suffered and bled so much that he could no longer support himself and finally his body collapsed, he could no longer breath, and he suffocated from the trauma of it all. 

From hosanna and blessings we have turned to cries of pain, of agony, and despair:  My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!”

If the juxtaposition of the two things is jarring, alarming, disconcerting, friends, that’s exactly right.  Palm Sunday is exactly the world in which we live.

The rabbit shows up and is cute but out of place.  It shouldn’t live downtown, but here it is, a harbinger of habitat loss, persisting nonetheless.  It’s a week early for cultural Easter—and maybe a few decades too late environmentally.  It’s out of place.

Jesus comes among us, hailed as a prophet, priest, and king, and then within mere hours is seized, tortured, and lynched as a spectacle. 

And that’s the space between the Incarnation and the Resurrection—between the birth of our Lord and the empty tomb.  Maybe more precisely, that’s the space between the Creation of the world and the final Judgment, the heavenly banquet, the life everlasting within the sacred heart of God. 

We are existing, as Wystan Auden writes, “for the time being,” in this limnal space of “thy kingdom come” but “not yet.”  And the pain, the suffering, the jarring brokenness of it all, is real.

When children shoot and kill one another, it’s real, but it’s for the time being.  When viruses lay waste to millions of lives, it’s devastating, and it’s for the time being. When poverty and racism oppress so very many of the lives of God’s holy people, it’s traumatizing and death dealing—and for the time being. 

This terrible, horrible, beautiful, hope-filled space and time we inhabit is what it is.  It is now, it is for the time being, and it is not the final story.

But it is where we find ourselves.  With that little cottontail out on Broadway, out of time and place.  With our Lord, beaten and bruised and bloody and murdered—but also risen.  Also alive.  Also beloved.

Friends, we cannot get to Easter without going through Jesus’s days of passion and death.  We cannot make it to the heavenly banquet without first understanding the reality of the suffering of sin, of despair, of life that denies God, that spits in the very face of Jesus.

Because that’s the place we are in.  The world, the time and space and materiality that God has made and adores, is not the final reality.  But it is beloved of God.  And here we are, you and I and the little cottontail and all of it, right here and now, with Jesus, at the foot of the cross, at the empty tomb, in the upper room and at the table in Emmaus and on the mountaintop at his ascension. 

And we will be there together at his throne in glory, just as we anticipate it this morning in this mass.

But for now, this is where we are.

So come.  Let us walk together the way of our Lord this Holy Week.

Let us realize again the reality of the pain and suffering of sin—but be filled up anew with the hope and anticipation and glory of the promise of Jesus’s resurrection. 

For these are not merely historical events we remember.  They are markers, signposts, promises, of the reality of eternal life with him who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

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Living Water

The Rev’d E. Bevan Stanley
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Third Sunday in Lent
March 12, 2023

Exodus 17:1-7
Romans 5:1-11
John 4:5-42

               Jesus said: “The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” In the Name of the one, holy, and undivided Trinity. Amen.

               Setting aside the Passion narrative that we will hear in Holy Week, I think this is the longest Gospel passage in the lectionary. As a result there are a number of issues and themes in it, any of which could be the basis for a sermon. For example, one could focus on how Jesus crosses the boundaries between Jews and Samaritans and between men and women. One could focus on how Jesus knows everything the Samaritan woman did and still accepted her.

(By the way, whenever I read that the woman’s testimony was that Jesus told her everything she had ever done, I am reminded of a book my daughter had as a child. It was called One Thousand Monsters. It was a spiral bound flip book with ten cardboard pages. Each page was divided into three pieces, so with ten pages one could have one thousand different combinations. For example “This slimy beast has five arms and hides under your bed.” Or”This hungry horror likes to jump up and down and chases bicycles.” But the most frightening ones were those that ended “ . . . and knows what you did.” It’s bad news when a monster knows what you did. It may not be easy news that Jesus knows what you did, but it is good news. )

One could look at how the Samaritan tradition looked forward to the coming of a “prophet like Moses” as predicted in the Pentateuch more than a new Elijah as foretold in the prophets. We could think about what constitutes true worship in spirit and truth. We could look at the incomprehension of the disciples. One could speak about readiness of the harvest and the need for more laborers. One could speak about what it means to acknowledge Jesus as Savior of the world.

               Instead of any of these I suggest that we take a hint from the first reading and reflect on

the gift of water. Before we look at how water is used in today’s readings, let us first acknowledge that water is a powerful archetype and carries many different and even conflicting associations. It can represent the quenching of thirst, cleansing, the source of life both in evolution and in the amniotic fluid in the womb. It can be pictured as a peaceful lake, or a raging storm. It can represent life or death. In can be the primeval abyss of chaos and creativity over which the Holy Spirit moved at the creation. It can remind us of Baptism. And on and on.

               In our reading from Exodus this morning, the Children of Israel are crossing the dessert, perhaps the Sinai. They run out of water and are in danger of dying of thirst. Before we go any farther, lets take a moment and recall a time when we were really thirsty. Maybe you were on a hike or had been mowing the lawn on a hot summer day. I remember a very long portage on a canoe trip. The trail just kept going on, the canoe on my head kept getting heavier. At last I saw a flicker of blue through the trees. I plodded down the last slope to the lake shore and just walked in up to my thighs, threw the canoe off and plunged my head into the blessed, cool, divine water. I am sure each of us has a story like that. For the Israelites it was worse. More than a discomfort, their lives were in peril. God tells Moses to use his magical staff and strike the rocky cliff. He does so, and water gushes out. The people are saved by God intervention through the mediation of Moses. Water is salvation, and it comes from God. A note in my Bible says that in the Sinai there is a water table beneath the layer of sandstone.

               In the Gospel, Jesus comes to a Samaritan town or city and sits down by the well which tradition held had been dug by Jacob a couple of thousand years earlier. It is the middle of the day. A Samaritan woman comes out to draw water at the well. Commentators have often pointed out that noonday is an odd time to draw water; it is usually done first thing in the morning or near dusk. There is a suggestion that, given the problematic nature of this woman’s personal life, it may have been less socially uncomfortable for her to get her water at a time when she could avoid the other women of the town.

               In any case, she comes to the well, and Jesus opens a conversation with her by asking for a drink of water. She had a bucket, and he did not. When Jesus asks for water because he is thirsty, he is in the same position as the Children of Israel in the desert. He needs water and asks for it. This puts the Samaritan woman in the position of Moses who is called upon to provide the water or to be the means by which God will provide it. Unlike Moses, she does not produce the water. Instead, she asks why he is even asking.

               Somehow she knows he is a Jew and asks why he is breaking the norms and speaking to her who is a Samaritan. Jesus responds, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, `Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” Jesus starts by asking for water from the woman, and now he has turned the conversation around. He is offering water to the woman. Jesus is now offering to take the place of Moses in providing the water. This would make him the “prophet like Moses” predicted in the Torah. This more like the messiah the Samaritans would be looking for than the Son of David for which the more southerly tradition would be waiting. In this context, it is a messianic claim.

               Much as in the conversation Jesus had last Sunday with Nicodemus, there arises a misunderstanding on the part of the Jesus’ interlocutor. The woman thinks Jesus is still talking about literal water and asks how Jesus thinks he will get water without a bucket. And who does he think he is anyway? Someone greater than Jacob who gave them the well? Jesus responds by making it clear that he is talking about something more than just wet liquid. “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” Also, the water that Jesus is offering is living water, that is, water that is bubbling up as in a spring, not just sitting in a cistern or at the bottom of a well.

               So, what is this water that Jesus is offering? The Spirit? Knowledge of the Law? Life? Salvation? What ever it is, it is eternal. And it leaps up. The Greek verb is used of living things. If we drink of this water, we will never by thirsty again. Not only that. If we drink of the water from Jesus, we ourselves will become springs. We will be the source of the life-giving and life-saving water gushing out and leaping up for others.

               This is Lent. Lent is a time for us to get real about ourselves and our relationship with God. It is a time for self-examination and a time to attend to spiritual maintenance, including patching up holes or healing wounds. It is a time for facing the truth about ourselves. It is a time to let Jesus tell us everything we ever did. This may be frightening, and such truth will set us free. This truth will contain things that we regret and things of which we can rejoice. On Ash Wednesday we were reminded that we are mortal. We are made the dust of the earth and the divine breath. We are made of dirt and God. Today, we are reminded that we are thirsty mortals, and, unless God gives us water, we will die. And then Jesus teaches us that God does not want merely to be a source of water for us; God wants us to become sources of water. Like the rock at Massah and Meribah, Jesus invites us to be springs of living water gushing up from our stony hearts to eternal life.

               So, come my friends and let take this journey by stages. First, we acknowledge our need, our thirst. We ask for God to meet our need and give us water. We rejoice when we receive it. Then we encounter Jesus who, in taking on our flesh, experiences thirst and asks us to draw some water from whatever well we may have. Then when we ask who he really is, he tells us that he has water for us to drink that will change us from needy, thirsty people, to creatures of abundance and life, providing joy and healing and life for others. This is the path of Lent. This is the path of the Christian life. God does not want us to wallow in self-abnegation, or to be defined by our frailties. God wants us to become godlike in dispensing life and joy and grace to all around us to the glory of the Father and of the Son and of the holy Spirit. Amen.

Sin and Shame

The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The First Sunday in Lent
February 26, 2023

When I was a young child of about 6, or 8, or 12—I really can’t remember when or where—my parish invited me to read the first lesson at Christmas lessons and carols.  The first lesson is usually read by a chorister, and the readers go up in rank from there.  In the college chapel they’d have gone from chorister to student to professor to dean to dean of the chapel—and so on.  But as a child it was a great honor to read the first lesson.

And wouldn’t you know it, the first lesson is not unlike the first lesson we hear today—the moment when Adam and Eve, through their disobedience, become aware of sin and of evil in the world—the moment in which they realize that things are not as they were created to be.  The moment that they realize that they are naked, and sew together some fig leaves, and learn about SHAME.

There was a joke in the South-- and maybe everywhere, I wouldn’t know—a joke popularized by the essayist and humorist Lewis Grizzard—about how Southerners pronounce the word N-A-K-E-D.  Lewis said that the right pronunciation of that word, as it appears in our first lesson today, is naked.  It just means that the person in question has no clothes on. 

But, Lewis also said, there’s another way to pronounce that word—a pronunciation unique to the South—in which, by changing the initial vowel, moving the syllabic accent, and doubling the consonance, the word becomes nekkid, a word with much more power and insinuation.  Naked just means that a person isn’t wearing clothes.  Nekkid means that you’re up to something, Lewis says.

And so with that joke ringing in my ears, I read, over and over again, this passage from Genesis.  I practiced for hours, for days, to be able to say the word naked out loud, without laughing. Over and over and over.

I’ve never been so nervous before.  And thankfully I’ve never been so nervous speaking in public since.  But I’ve also not had to read that passage again since that fateful time as a very young person!  So kudos to our reader today, and well done.  I’m glad it wasn’t I who was reading.

My laughs as a child—and maybe some of our laughs today—at that word belie a certain kind of discomfort, a kind of anxiety, with our bodies, with the way we are made, with the very story of Adam and Eve and the snake and original sin.

For “the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.” Gen 3:7  Doesn’t the whole story seem to say that there is something wrong with Adam and Eve?  I mean, they ate the fruit, they got some special knowledge about how tasty the fruit was, and how the world works, and suddenly they’re standing there nekkid, and they’d better do something about it.  They’re bad. Let’s cue the fig leaves and some fast fashion.

Isn’t that how we’ve internalized this story of Adam and Eve? 

Let’s look, for a contrast, and the story of Jesus and his temptation.  Let’s look at what the very incarnation of God does when tempted by the serpent, by the devil, by evil. 

Remember that Jesus has just been baptized.  We talked about it on the second Sunday in January—the baptism of our Lord.  We talked about how Jesus came to John and asked him to baptize him, and that in the very act itself, the heavens opened and something like a dove appeared and a voice proclaimed, This is my son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased. (Mt 3:17)

Now in our time a person might engage a process of formation, of catechesis, and maybe go on a retreat and pray and prepare for baptism.  But Jesus does it the other way around.  Immediately after his baptism Jesus goes into the wilderness for forty days (biblical parlance for “a very long time”), and while he’s there he fasts and prays. 

In that period the devil—or evil—or the serpent—or our lesser nature, whatever you want to call it—evil comes to him and offers him things that, frankly, any normal human creature would want.

Jesus was hungry.  The devil offered him food.  “Make these stones become bread.”  Evil invited Jesus, very God, to attend to his own needs before the needs of others—to focus on his own desires even in the midst of his fast.  Oh come on, Jesus.  It’s just a little snack.  Treat yourself.  You deserve it!  Evil invites him to turn his own attention to his own needs, his own desires, to himself.

Isn’t this the advice we get every time we fly on a plane?  Put on your own oxygen mask first before helping the children or others with you?  Take care of yourself first.

In those situations perhaps it’s right to attend to one’s own needs so that one may then help others, but the devil invites Jesus to take care of himself only.  And Jesus turns back towards God.  Life isn’t in bread but in the words of God alone.

The devil isn’t done, though.  Evil offers Jesus a chance to focus on himself as opposed to God—to take his trust away from God and put it in his own hands. 

Come up to this high place, and just jump! It’ll be fun!  Besides, you’ll prove you’re God’s son.  God won’t let you fall.

What an offer.  This could have been a useful miracle, right?  A proof of Jesus’s power—that he could jump from a high place and not be hurt. 

But Jesus’s reply stays true.  He refuses to test God, to need even for a second to have God prove God’s own self.  He refuses to put the emphasis on himself over God’s own being: Do not put God to the test.

And finally Satan, the serpent, evil, the small voice that promises us the world, does that exact thing to Jesus.  Just bow to me, and I’ll give you the entire world, evil says.

Now this could be useful.  Isn’t Jesus the king of all of creation?  Wouldn’t this have been expedient?  Why not—for just a fraction of a second of a bow—why not get things sewed up then and there?  But Jesus puts his focus back on God.  Worship only God.  Serve only God. 

And evil is thwarted and leaves.  And angels attend to him.

I have to be honest, what the devil is offering here isn’t violence or murder or degradation.  He’s offering things that, frankly, we say we want.

Can’t you imagine a meeting in a boardroom high over Manhattan with a McKenzie partner  promising wealth, recognition, and market share to David Solomon at Goldman?  Or market research consultants in a meeting at Yale New Haven—or even at the Corporation—or even on our social media feeds.  “Be your best self.”  “Make the most for yourself.”  “Show the world what you can do.”  “Get all that you deserve.”

Friends, the devil isn’t the exotic purple snake in the Kempe window in the chapel.  The devil is the evil in our own hearts that leads us to choose ourselves over others—ourselves over God.  The thing that says we are more important than anything else.  And also the thing that tells us that we are not okay, that we are unloved, that we should be ashamed—that we are nekkid before the world. 

What Jesus in his encounter with deep evil shows us is that evil is mundane, normal, ordinary.  It’s the easy things to assent to.  And that Jesus, not because he’s a superhero but because he knows the truth of who God is, that Jesus can say no to evil.

And so can we.  We’ve met God in Jesus Christ.  We know that God says that we are beloved when we come up out of those waters of baptism. We know that God chooses us.  And also we can still, because we have free will, just like Adam and Eve, we too can eat that fruit. We can jump from that pinnacle.  We can grab all the bread for ourselves and try to own the whole world.

But we, like Jesus, can also say no.  We can keep our eyes and our hearts and our lives fixed on the cross, on the loving arms of God, and we can say no to the lies the devil and the world tell us—and say yes to being the wholly authentic beautiful creatures that God has made us to be.

That’s what Lent is about.  It’s about being aware of those choices.  Being aware when the devil, the purple snake, the world offers us lies that are so seductive and that make such sense—but instead turning back to God and putting our whole trust in God.  It’s about practicing loving God more than anything else, because only in loving God can we love one another—and ourselves.

And here’s what Lent is not:  It’s not about being ashamed about our bodies, or our genders, or our orientations, or our colors or shapes or sizes, because God made all those things and loves them.  These are my children, in whom I am well pleased, says God as we come up out of those waters of baptism. 

No one is saying Adam and Eve are bad for being who they are.  They’re unclothed, they’re not nekkid, for goodness’ sake! 

They just made the rather unfortunate choice to follow their own wills, not God’s.  To do what they thought was advantageous for them rather than trusting God’s providence and love.  They doubled down on greed rather than on hope.

They’re not intrinsically bad.  In fact, they, like we, are made for good!  They just made a bad choice. And now everything else flows from it.

That, friends, is original sin. Not some weird tortured intrinsic evil in our bodies, in our composition, in our selves, but our dogged foolishness to make very, very bad choices.  To choose selfishness, greed, pride, and lust over choosing God’s love for us.  That’s all it is.

And here’s the worse news.  We will probably keep doing it again and again.  Jesus is the only person who has consistently said no to the devil, after all!

But like Adam and Eve we will keep practicing.  We will keep trying.  And we will keep fasting and praying and confessing and receiving again and again God’s grace. 

I don’t know about you, but I’m still telling that six or eight or twelve year old that Adam and Eve are just naked, not nekkid.  And maybe Eve and Adam are still figuring it out themselves. 

And so, to put a point on it all, this Lent I pray for us that we will do three things:

1)     Rebuke any sense of shame within our intrinsic selves.  God has made us and loves us and invited us, like Jesus, to rise from the baptismal waters with the words In them I am well pleased.

2)     Take seriously the reality of evil—that the things that seem like conventional wisdom can in fact be the work of evil, the work of separating us from God and one another and from ourselves, so that we must take seriously our own choices just as Jesus does.  We can say no to evil.  That’s part of how God has made us.  But, to be honest and truthful,

3)     We must also be honest that we will probably fail, and probably over and over again, to keep God first, to be in right relationship with God and one another and ourselves.  We may let shame creep in and control us.  We may let greed get the upper hand.  We may even let our anxieties keep us from being the things God has made us to be.  After all, only Jesus has ever been sinless.  That’s all the Church means by original sin.

But even in our sinful state, God is not changed.  God is still claiming us.  These are my children in whom I am well pleased.

Friends, I am praying for us a holy Lent.  And I am praying that we, cursed with the knowledge that Adam and Eve have,  really take seriously our discernment—our awareness of evil in the world.  I pray that we know how we participate in it—and how we can separate ourselves through our choices from it—and how it’s visited on us, regardless of our choices.

But mostly I pray that we know and claim and hold fast to the truth of our existence—that we belong to God, that we are made by God, and that God delights in us.  That God has mercy upon us.  That God forgives us. 

That as soon as we see the things that separate us from God and one another, God laughs and forgives. 

God loves a good joke, just like Lewis did.  But God is faithful, and God will not let go of what God has made and what God loves.

With thanks for God who is all merciful, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…

 + + +

You Are the Salt of the Earth

The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Fifth Sunday after Epiphany
February 5, 2023

‘You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.  (Matthew 5.13)

What do you think of when you think of salt?  I generally always think of those old blue boxes with the girl with the umbrella on them—the Morton salt box—“When it rains, it pours,” the marketing slogan said, in a reference, I suppose, to how the salt was non-caking—how it would pour even in humid climates.  That was a useful thing in the South where I grew up; my grandmother would put rice grains in her salt shaker to try to keep the salt from caking.  Maybe she hadn’t found Morton’s, or maybe even its anti-caking properties couldn’t stand up to the high humidity of South Georgia.  The issues of clumping notwithstanding, salt is something of a commodity in my mind, right along with sugar and flour, fairly inexpensive at the local market.  I’ve had a box of sea salt now in my cabinet for at least ten years; it’s survived at least four moves and is still a quarter full.  I’m not hanging onto it because I think it’s particularly valuable.  I’ve just been sparing on the salt usage—and I don’t want to waste it, so I haven’t thrown it out.  It’s just as good now as it was then.  And Morton’s advertising notwithstanding, it’s not clumped a bit as far as I can tell.  I haven’t thought a bit about it as a valuable thing to hold onto.

That’s not how the ancient world would have viewed salt, though, is it?  Salt would have been extraordinarily valuable.  I use salt occasionally to bring out the flavor of a vegetable that I’m cooking, or even some meat, but before refrigeration, not that long ago, salt would have been a mainstay of preserving food.  Think of salted, dried fish; bacon and ham; and even corned beef.  The salt serves to dry out the food and prevent the growth of bacteria that would spoil it.  Today we can put fresh foods into the refrigerator or the freezer, but even a hundred years ago salt still would have been an important method of food preservation, as it was in Jesus’s day. 

This value that salt has for preservation made it important to local economies, then.  Salt could be traded—first  mined from underground deposits or collected from evaporative techniques—and then transported along trade routes to cities to be sold in markets.  The production of salt—and even more its trading—became important economic activities in the ancient world.  If you’ve ever been to Salzburg in Austria, the birthplace of Mozart, you’ll have seen the medieval fort and castle built on a ridge high above the town—Hohensalzburg—evidence of the importance of the salt trade to this region—and to the fortunes of the Archbishops of Salzburg. 

So one thing that Jesus is saying about the salt—and about us—is that it’s valuable.  We are valuable.  “You are the salt of the earth.” You are valuable to God—we are valuable to God.  Not like those little packets of salt that come in your take out meal—or like the salt canister in your cupboard—but like something rare that has to be mined from the earth, or distilled from the sea—that has to be carried over long distances.  You are rare, you are valuable. You are the salt of the earth.

That value is intrinsic.  That value has to do with being made in God’s image.  With being redeemed by Jesus Christ in his birth, his death, and his resurrection.  That value has to do with being sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.  We belong to God in Christ—and we find our worth, and our value, there, at the foot of the cross.  We are God’s.

But that intrinsic value can be eroded, our gospel reading seems to say.

“But if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?” Jesus asks.  Now, we know that salt is a mineral—actually a compound—sodium chloride.  But the salt you might dig up from a mine or take from the ocean has other things in it, too—other things than the sodium and chloride that give it flavor, that affect its taste.  If salt is stored somewhere wet, the salt itself, the sodium chloride, can leech away, leaving the other minerals behind, substances that don’t have the flavor-enhancing characteristics of the salt, that don’t have the preservative properties—that don’t have the value of the salt.  The goodness of the salt—the bits you want—have washed away.

Last Sunday we heard the beatitudes—the part of the sermon on the mount, Jesus’s own preaching, that reminds us “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted...  Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are the merciful…the pure in heart…the peacemakers…”  Those teachings of Jesus that give us a view of the kingdom of God, the values of the very heart of God.   Mother Teresa reminded us that the Beatitudes can be a faithful response to God’s love for us—to God’s love for creation.

We are the salt of the earth.  But if salt has lost its saltiness, how can it be restored?  If we aren’t living into this vision of the kingdom of God, not just in the future, but here and now, how can we be the people that God has made us to be?  We can’t just sit around on the shelf like the Morton’s salt canister!  We have to actively DO the thing that God has made us to do—to BE the people God has made us to be.  God calls us to action—to doing—to being.  Let’s not lose our saltiness, Jesus seems to be saying.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu and his daughter the Rev’d Mpho Tutu van Furth have written a book entitled Made for Goodness.  The Tutus’ premise is that God has made us for goodness—to live in the realm of the possibility of the kingdom of God—to live as though that kingdom has come—to love like Jesus in the world around us.  Anything that is NOT goodness is not us—is not what God has made us to be.  Anything that is NOT goodness is not salt—it’s just the detritus that collects when the salt washes away.

So what does that look like, to BE salt?  To let your light shine, as the gospel says?  “You are the light of the world…  Let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your father in Heaven.”   And I want to be clear—being salt, letting your light shine—those aren’t ways to earn grace, to earn salvation—they’re just being who it is God has made us to be.  Anything else is, well, putting our light under a bushel basket, Jesus tells us!

Being salt can just be showing up.  Being present.  Being who we are made to be, even in difficult and challenging places—even in the face of despair.  Showing up and being a witness to God’s resurrection power.  Being faithful.  Putting one foot in front of the other.

Maybe it’s showing up to pray even when it seems like it doesn’t matter.  Maybe it’s showing up for coffee hour or a potluck even when we think we’d prefer to be alone—joining with other Christians in community.  Maybe it’s showing up at Community Soup Kitchen to help, yes, but even more to just be present with other people whose circumstances may be difficult—maybe difficult in different or even the same ways as our own—finding common humanity, being reminded that we all are made in the image of God.

Maybe out of our abundance we give something to others.  Sure, it makes sense for self-preservation to hold onto everything we have, to build up walls for our protection, to close ourselves off when we’re afraid—but in Jesus we already have everything we need.  We are salt.  We are light.  What if we share some of that with the world?  A little light, a little salt, goes a long way. 

Maybe out of the great love we’ve been given we share some to turn the other cheek, as Jesus says, even in the face of great wickedness. 

Pope Francis in his homily at mass this morning in Juba, South Sudan, reminded the faithful that being salt—showing up—enlivens not only our own lives but the entire community around us.  And he went on to call for peace.  For mercy.  For forgiveness—for an end to the conflict in South Sudan.  "’Let us learn to apply the salt of forgiveness to our wounds; salt burns but it also heals,’ he said, insisting that they refuse to repay evil with evil, even when hearts may be bleeding.”[1]

Rosa Parks, who was born 110 years ago yesterday, was salt and light.  Parks exercised “creative maladjustment” when she refused to obey an unjust law.  She gave catalyst and courage to the Montgomery bus boycotts—she threw her salt into the game and enlivened the discourse on race and human rights in our nation and the world.  And that was no accident, right?  It took work and planning—and a whole lot of people working together—and a whole lot of the Holy Spirit moving—but Ms Parks was willing to be the salt in that mix—to be the salt, to shine her light for God. 

There’s a whole lot of light, a whole lot of saltiness in the body of Christ.  It doesn’t take only the extraordinary acts of heroism like those of Rosa Parks, though they can be examples for us, and the salt they’ve shared has enlivened the world.  But it also takes ordinary acts of Christian courage.  A word here, a prayer there.   Little bits of salt that help the dough rise.  Little places of light that come together to share the blazing glory that is the light of Christ.

My friends, we are made for goodness.  Be salt in this world.  Be light in the darkness.  Be the love of God that you share with everyone you meet.

[1] Deborah Castellano Lubov, Pope at mass in in South Sudan: https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2023-02/pope-at-mass-in-dr-congo-be-missionaries-of-peace-homily1.html (2/5/2023)

Portions of this sermon were previously preached 5 February 2017 in Christ Church, New Haven.

Be Not Afraid

The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Eve of the Feast of the Nativity
December 24, 2022

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. +

Wherever you find yourself this Christmas, whether at home with the weather and watching online, or here in person with friends or family or even alone, or if you’re traveling and watching from afar, a very merry Christmas to you.

One of the joys of this Christmas eve service together is hearing again the Christmas story, seeing it acted out again in the scene of the crèche, just in front of the font in the back of the church.  There are oxen and donkeys and sheep and shepherds and even a little dog gathered around the Holy Family.  Everyone is gazing at the infant Jesus.  You can feel the warmth in the soft candle glow, in the goodwill folks bear for one another, in memories we hold and bring with us of Christmases past.

One of my favorite memories is of Christmas pageants—live tableaus acting out the Christmas story, or even live nativity scenes with their animals and scratchy bales of hay, a little baby either asleep or, if the feeding isn’t timed just right, screaming in anticipation of the next meal of milk.

Everything seems beautiful in the manger scene, in the pageant—everything seems right with the world. 

In fact, one of my favorite Christmas memories is of a church pageant with a third grade sage called Sarah.  Sarah was an angel in the cast of eighty some odd children; she had dutifully been to all six rehearsals.  She’d learned her songs by heart.  She’d taken care of her wings and halo.  She was all in.  And when a less Christmas-pageant-experienced adult asked young Sarah what she liked about the Christmas pageant, she replied, with only the wisdom a third grader can muster,

The pageant is a place where we can act out heaven.

Sweet, right?  The scene at the manger, the Christmas pageant, is play-acting for heaven.

Except that, for any of you who have ever managed a Christmas pageant—or even for those of you who have children, or have prepared a casserole for a family Christmas dinner, or made any Christmas plans whatsoever, the reality of the situation behind the scenes is that the pageant is complete chaos!  The holidays are chaotic!  Our world—our lives—are full of chaos.  Anxiety.  Discomfort.  Even perhaps fear.

The fear of that little girl standing up to sing her solo at the microphone, bedecked in tinsel and bathrobe with a gold lamé sash.  The fear of an immigrant family crossing the desert in the cold, trying to escape from violence and poverty and despair.  The fear of a parent wondering if 2023 will hold a new job, or even a pay rise, to cope with the rising costs of food or housing.  The fear of someone living rough wondering where they may find a warm place to be safe for the night.  The fear of a Ukranian mother wondering if the next missiles will hit her apartment where she and her children are huddled close trying to stay warm this Christmas night.

Friends, it was no different that first Christmas in Bethlehem. 

Mary and Joseph were traveling—while Mary was pregnant.  They didn’t find a comfortable place to stay and to give birth; they made do with a stable.  The shepherds were living rough, out in the cold, trying to scratch a living out of the hills for their animal stock.  The citizens of Judea were under Roman occupation—it was, after all, the governor’s call for a census—to create a roll for purposes of taxation. 

The world was just as complicated then as it is now.  There was just as much fear.  Mary and Joseph were as worried as that Ukrainian mother.  The shepherds were just as anxious about next year as any parent.  And soon Mary and Joseph would take little Jesus and flee to Egypt to avoid violence and even death.

That world of anxiety, fear, and violence is the same world that Jesus was born into.  The same world into which God breaks forth.  The same world that God loves.

The hazy soft warm glow of the candles around the crèche, the Christmas memories, the warm feelings of peace on earth and goodwill I can hold onto for about twelve hours—those feelings are lovely, and I’m giving thanks for them.  But those feelings aren’t the whole story.  Behind the scenes at the pageant everything’s chaos, and God is breaking in.

Our little friend Sarah was right; the pageant is a place where we can act out heaven—not just the good feelings, the warm feelings, the feelings of hope and joy—but also the places of anxiety and fear into which God comes—into which the angels speak those words, Don’t be afraid.

Do not be afraid.  Jesus says it constantly throughout the gospels.  And here the angels say it first.  Don’t be afraid.

Don’t be afraid.  God knows your fears, your anxieties, your joys and your sorrows.  God knows and is accompanying you in those places.  God is here now in the warm glow of candlelight—and in the dark and cold apartments in Kiev.  God has come, Emanuel, God with us, precisely to those places of fear and chaos to speak radical words of love:

Do not be afraid.  You are mine.  All will be well.  The kingdom of God is near—and the kingdom of God will come.

It’s in the quiet place of that manger in Bethlehem, in those silent fields, that God speaks this word of hope: Do not be afraid.

It’s in the quiet, even the vulnerable, places that God shows up.  That Jesus breaks in.  That the Word is made flesh and dwells among us.  Not in the saber-rattling, the gunfire, or the bombast, but in the quiet mangers of the world.  In the fields among poor shepherds.  Around the animals.  Don’t be afraid.  I am with you.  I am here, through all of it.  I am for you.

When you go out into this night to whatever’s next, to dinner or presents or celebrations or to time alone or quiet or sleep, remember those words of the angels—those words sent from God.  Do not be afraid.

God has come, Emanuel is with us, in the chaos, in the joys, and in the sorrows of our lives.  Precisely in the chaos of those places.  The Christmas crèche is where we get to act out heaven.  Where we anticipate the peace and joy and wholeness of dwelling solely within God’s love, God’s realm, within the kingdom of God.

But for now, friends, be not afraid. 

Take those words with you.

Take Jesus with you.  Come to this altar and receive him again.  Take him out into the world.

Be not afraid.  O Come, let us adore him, Christ the Lord.

Beginning of Birthpangs

The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost
November 14, 2021

As Jesus came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” (Mark 13:1-2)

In the name of God: Father, Son, & Holy Spirit. Amen.

Last week a reporter at the New Haven Register phoned me to ask how church attendance was looking.  I don’t think the story ran, but the conversation was interesting.  He was curious to know if attendance had rebounded since the start of the COVID pandemic.

Now believe it or not, but we actually do keep statistics about things like this!  You can go online and read, for every Episcopal church, what the average Sunday attendance is and what total giving is for each year, going back for about ten years in the current data set.  And what I can tell you is that, actually, numbers have been going up!  Before COVID, on average, about 175 people came to church here at Christ Church each Sunday.  Now, that’s not every person that comes to church, of course, or all the people affiliated with this community—that number is much higher.  But that number, “Average Sunday Attendance,” is exactly what it sounds like.  Each service the ushers count how many people are there.  We add all those numbers up for every Sunday and at the end of the year divide by 52—and behold, there’s the magic average Sunday attendance, or ASA.

So that number, before COVID, was about 175. 

Now, after a year and a half of pandemic, almost two years, that number is 140. 

That’s a decrease of 30 people each Sunday on average, or less than 20%, which looks about right to me. 

The difference from now till a March of 2020, though, is that now almost a quarter of those people are praying together online via our livestream.  If you look around and expect to see someone in the seat next to you, that person may well be there—but virtually, in their living room, with a cup of tea or some breakfast or with their family gathered around. 

It’s a brave new world we’re in as the pandemic stretches on.  And what do we do with that change?

What do we do when we’re confronted with the fact that not everyone is together in the building any more? 

And what’s more, what about the people that aren’t joining on livestream—for whom going to church—or being a part of the Church—is a completely foreign idea?  When I was a child growing up in our hometown, if anyone new moved in, one of the questions you’d ask is, “Where are you going to church?”  And the answer was usually either the Methodist or the Baptist church!  There were cultural expectations about religion, and everyone in that town—almost everyone—was Christian, whether they followed Jesus or not!

That’s not the case any longer.  And many of you know it.  Being Christian, being baptized, joining with a community of believers, coming together on Sundays or any day really to offer praise and thanksgiving to God—all of this is profoundly countercultural.  There is no cultural expectation of it any longer.  You’ve made a distinct and deliberate choice to be here today, either in person, or via the livestream.  You chose to do this instead of something else.  And here we are together.

The world is changing all around us.  The world has changed around us.  We may be longing for normalcy, to “get back to normal,” to get back to a life pre-COVID.  Some of you may be longing for the days of the post-war church, when families went to services each Sunday at 11am and then out to lunch afterwards, and there were guilds and groups and book clubs and events.  Maybe you’re longing for the good old days when politicians either side of the aisle could work together, and rhetoric was decent and civil, and things felt less fraught.  Or maybe you just long to go out to a restaurant and not have to wear a mask.

We want things to be the way they were.  But they’re not.  And we don’t know what things will look like—what society will look like, what the Church will look like, what our lives will look like.  Change is the only constant. And that may be disorienting.  It may feel like things are falling apart. 

And I want to suggest to you that that’s probably okay.  It’s probably always been that way, and we just haven’t noticed it lately.

Our story in this morning’s gospel is an uncomfortable look at change.  At destruction, really.  What does Jesus have to teach us?

In this passage from Mark Jesus has been in the temple in Jerusalem, and as he walks out of that magnificent building, one of his disciples exclaims, "Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!"

You’d think Jesus would agree.  After all, Jesus shows up in synagogues and in the Temple.  I’ll bet if he were traveling he’d even join via livestream from wherever he was for prayers.  Jesus is a faithful churchgoer.  I’m a faithful churchgoer.  And I like beautiful church buildings!  In fact, whenever someone remarks on the beauty of the church building here at Christ Church, I usually reply in agreement and then ramble on a little about the history of the building, the architect Henry Vaughan's pedigree, or the remarkable CE Kempe glass in our windows--the largest collection of Kempe outside of England. It's a beautiful building and a real resource for ministry.  That’s why we’re involved in a capital campaign right now to pay for the new roof on the tower here—to keep this place viable as a symbol, a signpost, and as a gathering point for Christians in New Haven.  As a place we can pray together.

But Jesus doesn’t have any kind words for the building.  In fact, his reply isn't to praise the buildings at all; he’s clearly not in the middle of a capital campaign!  What he says instead is shocking:  "Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down."

Jesus is, of course, right. The Temple was destroyed once before when the Babylonians took Jerusalem by siege and dragged the ruling class of Judea off to Babylon.  We’ve been reading in Morning Prayer about the rebuilding of the temple, the second Temple, through the permission of the Persian king Cyrus.  And it’s this second Temple, greatly enlarged, a grand space, that Jesus would have known—on whose steps Jesus was standing.  And within forty years of Jesus's words on the steps of that building, the Romans would in fact desecrate and destroy this second Temple, pulling it down.

Physics and history teach us that nothing in our world that seems permanent really is; everything is always changing. And sometimes that change can look like decay--maybe even disaster.

But God's perspective is longer than my own.

In these shorter, darker days of autumn, one might be understandably concerned about change, about disruption, about loss and decay. After all, we're still in the end days of a worldwide pandemic, a plague, that's taken over five million lives worldwide, disrupted the economy and labor market, and upended our supply chains. Our country is torn apart by political disagreement, anger, and sometimes even hatred. Human lives are broken by greed, addiction, racism, violence, and even illness--here in our city, in our own families, in our own homes.

This Veterans Day and Remembrance Day we look back to those wars, especially the First World War, when soldiers fighting and people in the path of battle must have thought the world was ending. It was the war to end all wars.  And then there was the Second World War--and constant war and fighting ever since, as there ever has been.

There is change and decay all around us.

Where, then, do we find hope?  Why do we even try?  Why do we bother to gather here on Sunday, to stream in virtually, to put new roofs on buildings or go to work or cook dinner or visit with friends or family?  How can any of it have meaning in the face of such decay—such despair?

Immediately following Jesus's words, he continues to predict chaos and disorder: "Nation will rise against nation... there will be earthquakes...[and] famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs."

This prediction of chaos, of destruction, seems like disaster from the perspective of the moment. If the Temple falls, how can there still be a covenant with God? How can God's people be in relationship with God with no place to pray?

Are we seeing chaos and destruction in the world around us? In the Church even? Will people come back to mass after COVID? Will they join guilds? Will they give enough to keep this place going into the future? Can we afford to put on a new roof?! Will there ever be peace?  Can I ever go out in public without wearing a mask?  Will things ever get back to normal?

I'm reminded that, every time the Temple was sacked or desecrated, every time God's chosen people wandered away from God or were dragged into exile or sent out into the wilderness, each and every time God came to them again--reached out in relationship and love. They couldn't escape God's love.

God reaches out to us coming in the human and divine incarnate one, Jesus Christ, son of Mary, walking with us, suffering, loving, feeding, and healing. God is with us even in the midst of what seems like chaos and destruction.

What if chaos, what if destruction, was not an end but rather a waypoint? What if, instead of destruction, we are experiencing change?

What if, rather than hatred, we're feeling the last gasp of a dying dragon thrown down by St Michael and his warrior angels? What if the labor market and supply chain are teaching us something about how we produce and how we consume?

What if God is doing something--reconciling creation even now in the midst of what seems like disorder?!

Because friends, that's what I believe is happening.

Last Sunday, All Saints Sunday, I celebrated with you the second of two baptisms--two faithful Christians, one infant and one adult person, Zora and Cate, who love God. This is a profoundly countercultural act that they and their families have made.

Later that evening I celebrated with many of you mass in the dark, a sung mass following Compline, with only candlelight to illuminate the altar, the walls, the faces that filled the room. About sixty young adults, mostly college aged, came forward with candle-lit faces eager to receive the Presence of Christ in the sacrament. This too is profoundly countercultural. They came to seek something. They found Jesus.

If you're feeling the chaos and confusion of the present time, you are not alone. History is with you.  Commentators are writing about it.  I am feeling it with you. God is there with you.

But in the midst of all of it, God is working. Sometimes change feels like chaos, and that's ok. God didn't abandon God's people. Christ has not left the Church, which is his Body.

And that's why we're gathering.  And going to work.  And fighting against war and violence.  And developing vaccines.  And putting on new roofs. Building new bathrooms. Working on accessibility and clarity and information delivery. Why we move forward even in the midst of change. Because God is there. And people are seeking to know God.  And God is drawing the whole world to God’s own self.

I'm profoundly hopeful about what God is doing here at Christ Church. I'm overjoyed at the faithful support many of you are providing to the annual Stewardship Campaign--and to the Capital Campaign over this and next year as well. I'm overwhelmed by what's happening.

And I'm encouraged by that never-ceasing procession of souls and bodies to the altar in this place, praising and petitioning and adoring God -- and being filled up and sent out with the Presence of Christ in each of us.

This is but the beginning. But it's birthpangs, not pains of death. God is faithful. God is good. And the kingdom of God will prevail.

Pledge Sunday is next Sunday, Christ the King. Come and see. Come and pray. Come and give.

+ + +

Friendship and the Love of God

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“Jesus said to his disciples, . . . . ‘No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends . . . .’”

It’s hard to overstate how much Jesus’s words stand at odds with the prevailing mood in our culture when it comes to love. For decades now, we might as well have read collectively from a different gospel. And in that newfound gospel, what we hear usually goes something like this: “Greater love hath no one than this, that one find the right romantic partner and settle down and get married and live happily ever after.” Or else it goes something like this: “Greater love hath no one than this, that one become a parent to children.”

I suspect that for most of us, thinking about the word “love” probably conjures up something similar. The romanticized love of two partners for one another. The idealized love of a parent for a child. But it’s especially noticeable when it comes to romantic relationships. We talk about finding love, falling in love, falling out of love, and other gerundial phrases ending in love. We listen to love songs, we write love letters, we call people lovebirds. Love is in the air as flowers blossom, and the Lion King has cuddly teenage lions feeling the love tonight. Free love, marital love, all this love talk—all referring to the same conceptual cloud, the same group of things, in whatever combination we happen to find them.

It’s no surprise that it stings so much, then, when those are absent. Stores and commercials place so much on emphasis on Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day. And none of them are walks in the park when it turns out that these things that we hold up to be the be-all, end-all of human connection are actually deficient in our own lives. That’s not to say we shouldn’t celebrate them if we find them helpful or beneficial. But it is to say that if we don’t find them so useful, it may be reassuring to realize that we’re not alone. As a friend of mine once said about his own life one time in a sermon, the psalmist’s words—“Though my father and my mother forsake me, the Lord will sustain me”[i]—take on a different meaning when your father and mother have, in fact, forsaken you.

It’s important to realize that this is the lens that we bring, so many of us at least, to our gospel reading today. It’s in the air we breathe and in the water we drink. And that’s what should make it so surprising when Jesus says what he says today. Even Scripture talks elsewhere about Christ as the spouse of the Church and about God as Father and mother. But when Jesus talks about the depths of God’s love, he doesn’t compare it to marriage or to parenthood. He compares it to friendship: “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” And what’s more: “I do not call you servants any longer . . . but I have called you friends.”

Think for a moment about how extraordinary that is. The God of the Universe, the Lord of heaven and earth, wills to be our friend. If that sounds a bit too pedestrian or limited for our tastes, that may testify to our own pedestrian and limited understanding of what true friendship entails.

To that point, it might help to think about what a good friendship usually involves. In one of my first classes in law school, my professor was a former politician, and he often joked about the way politicians talk about one another: “‘Well, Governor so-and-so and Senator so-and-so are good friends of mine.’ But that’s ridiculous!” he’d say. “They’re not your friends. They’re your acquaintances. Your friends are the people you go get drinks with or talk about your life problems to.” And there’s something to that: friends as companions, people with whom we break bread and so forth.

From Aristotle to Aquinas, the classical tradition has often identified five hallmarks of friendship.[ii] First, “every friend wishes one’s friend to be and to live.” As Josef Pieper put it, “It is good that you exist.” Second, a friend “desires good things for one’s friend.” In other words, we wish them well on top of being glad they’re alive. Third, a friend “does good things to one’s friends.” Not just wishing them well, but actually doing good by them. Fourth, a friend “takes pleasure in another friend’s company.” We’re glad they exist, they’re alive, and that they’re nearby. There’s pleasure in abiding together. And fifth, a friend “is of one mind with another friend, rejoicing and sorrowing in almost the same things.” They go through the ups and downs of life together. Or as Saint Paul puts it, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.”[iii]

And note, these marks of friendship aren’t limited to the people we go out to dinner with or the ones we talk to on the phone necessarily. They include our so-called friends, but also our roommates or dormmates, or coworkers or colleagues. They include our mothers, our fathers, our other parents and grandparents, our partners and spouses. As long as we do all these things and others do in kind, and to the extent they actually happen, there’s more than the weak links that tie cubicle mates to each other. There’s more than the emotionally intense bonds that tie lovers to one another. There’s more, even, than the strongest bonds of affection that bind many mothers to their children and vice-versa. There is something in these friendships quite close to the divine. There is something exceptionally near to God.

And when we apply these things to God, there’s nothing buddy-buddy about that. For us, it means looking at God and say, “it is good that you exist.” It means desiring good things for God, namely that God be praised and glorified, and more than just desiring that God be praised and glorified, actually praising and glorifying God. Or as Jesus says, “You are my friends if you do what I command you.” Why? Because when a friend tells us something is hurtful to them and we ignore them, that hardly shows our love for them; but when a friend tells us they love something and we do it, that shows our devotion to them. And this friendship means taking pleasure in God’s company—to delight both in prayer and in God’s works. It means being of the same mind with God, to rejoice when God rejoices in goodness and mercy and loving-kindness, and to sorrow when God sorrows in sin and despair and death.

And note that the same thing is true for God. And what an incredible blessing this is. It means that God also looks at us and says, “it is good that you exist.” It means that God also desires good things for us, namely that we might have life and have it abundantly, and more than just desiring it, that God actually blesses us richly even as we face trials and tribulations. It means that God also takes pleasure in our company—imagine that!—that God is pleased when we draw near to the throne of grace with boldness, when we approach God in prayer, when we delight in God’s work in and around us. And above all, it means that God also wishes to be of the same mind as us—that God truly rejoices when we rejoice and weeps whenever we weep.

That is true friendship. That is true love. And that is the love that Jesus talks about having for each of us and wanting to have for each of us. We witness that love throughout our earthly pilgrimage in the bonds that we share one for another. On this Mother’s Day, we’re reminded of that in our secular calendar. We experience it day to day in the affection we have for those near and dear to us, whatever familial or social connections we share or don’t. But it’s important to remember that this love—the love of God toward us in Jesus Christ, the friendship of God—is one that encompasses, and embraces, and surpasses all these other bonds that we have, the bonds that link us by blood, by race, by nationality, by language, by political affiliation, by sports, by employers, by whatever the relevant group may be. That love unites us and makes us of one mind and one heart in Christ Jesus, the one “who fills all in all.”[iv] In that friendship, as Saint Paul reminds us, “[t]here is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”[v]

Jesus said to his disciples, just as Jesus says to us now, “I do not call you servants any longer . . . but I have called you friends.”

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[i] Ps. 27:14 (BCP).

[ii] See generally Thomas Aquinas, S. Th. II-II, q. 25, a. 7.

[iii] Rom. 12:15.

[iv] Eph. 1:23.

[v] Gal. 3:28.

It's Good to Be Wrong

The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Easter Day
April 4, 2021

He has been raised; he is not here!

In the name of God: Father, Son, & Holy Spirit. Amen.

Have you ever been wrong—and been happy about it? [1]

Sure, we’re wrong all the time—even when we don’t know it!  As Benjamin Franklin once wrote in a letter, nothing is certain except death and taxes.  Well, we know that’s not true—Leona Helmsley, Donald Trump, Nike and Federal Express have all managed to erode any certainty I have in the tax code! 

Being wrong for me is usually frustrating, or embarrassing, or just inconvenient.  But have you ever been glad to be wrong?

A few weeks ago I had, like many of you probably have done during COVID, a really terrible dream.  Thankfully I can’t remember much of it, but in this dream I had a terrible fight with someone—a really awful, knockdown, drag-out fight, and hurtful things were said!  I was sure we’d never be friends again after this horrible altercation, and I woke up with a pit in my stomach, feeling sad and anxious and wanting to call my friend and apologize. 

It all felt so real, but as I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and got out of bed and began to actually wake up, to come to my senses, I had the most incredible sense of relief as I realized the entire thing had been a dream!  There was no disagreement at all, no fight at all, nothing hateful had been said by anyone.  Everything was just fine! 

I had the lightest morning after that.  It was such a joy to be awake, alive, in relationship with my friend.  It was all just a COVID stress dream!  That morning I had a little extra spring in my step and a bit more good humor about the stresses of the pandemic on our sleep patterns and even our dream lives.

I was so glad to be wrong about what had happened.  My life was better for learning that I was wrong.

In today’s gospel we hear that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome have gone to the tomb to anoint Jesus’s dead body.  You know the story.  You know how it ends.  But they didn’t.

They expected that Jesus was dead. After all, they’d been there through his ministry. They had fed him, paid for his ministry, and accompanied him and the other disciples all over Galilee and now had gone to Jerusalem with him.  They’d seen him heal the sick, raise the dead, feed the hungry.  They knew his teachings, knew his mother and family, knew how much he loved them—and how much they loved him. 

They knew he was in danger coming into Jerusalem. They’d heard how the religious authorities and governmental officials were getting nervous since he’d raised Lazarus from the dead; they believed he was the one God had chosen to save God’s people.  They knew coming to Jerusalem for the Passover was dangerous, and yet they went there with him.  They saw him taken by the soldiers.  They saw him beaten, stripped, and nailed to the cross.  They watched as he suffered.  They heard his cries to God as he died.  They were there when his lifeless body was put into his mother’s arms.  They saw him laid in the tomb and saw it sealed with a stone. 

They knew what they had seen.  They had seen death.

They wanted to anoint him but there wasn’t enough time before nightfall, before Sabbath, and so they came on Sunday to care for his dead body.  And they worried about how they’d roll the stone away.

They knew what they’d seen.  They knew what to expect.  And they were completely wrong.

As they arrive to see something unexpected.  The stone is rolled away, and the man in the tomb is not Jesus—and is very much alive!  The strange young man tells them to go and tell Peter and the others and go to Galilee to meet Jesus.  It’s just as he told you it would be, the man says.[2]  He has been raised; he is not in the tomb!

Now, we might expect the Marys and Salome to rejoice at this point.  After all, this is good news, right?  Jesus is alive!  But they do not.  Instead “…they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”  (Mk 16:8)

Mary Magdalene, the other Mary, and Salome are wrong.  And thanks be to God!  Their friend, their teacher, their Lord and Savior is alive!  But they are afraid, because it’s not what they expected.  They are still seeing things through the lens of death. They are still looking for—expecting—death.

And why not?  They’d seen death.  They know what death looks like.  And so do we.

We know that our bodies die.  At best we get a calm and peaceful death—a good death.  At worst death can be painful, suffering, violent.  We’ve seen death.  We’ve seen COVID-19 take the lives of those whom we love.  We’ve seen George Floyd murdered under a police officer’s knee.  We’ve seen black men and women hang from trees, lynched, just like Jesus was lynched. 

We know death, don’t we? We expect death.

But what do we know about life?

Mary Magdalene and her friends run from the tomb in fear.  But they don’t stay afraid.  As the reality of what they’ve heard settles in, they understand Jesus is alive.  They do go and tell the others.  They do go to Galilee and meet him there!  They were so wrong, and now they are full of joy and wonder as they contemplate the risen body of their friend!  They are full of joy and wonder about what this means for their relationships with him.  They are full of joy and wonder at what this means about the world.

They came to the tomb seeking death.  They left in fear.  But they didn’t stay there.  They found life.

Friends, I want to say something provocative here, so bear with me.

What if God did not need Jesus to die in order to save Creation?  To save you and me?

What if Jesus’s death is the result of our disordered understanding of God?  Of one another?  Of all Creation?

What if we are the ones who believe in death?

Because Jesus’s resurrection makes it perfectly clear that, for God, death is not a thing.  Death does not exist.[3]

Jesus dies because we deal in death. We believe in death.  We have established systems of death dealing, of white supremacy, of oppression.  We have created income inequality and racism.  Creation breaks down and our bodies fail.  Not because God wills it—exactly the opposite!—but because we—you and I, our societies, and even the biology that surrounds us—believe in death. 

In showing us God’s will for love, for life—in raising Jesus from the dead—God is forgiving us.  God is forgiving all Creation.  God is forgiving even death itself.[4] 

Now, let me be clear, that death is real for us.  George Floyd really did suffer and die.  An Asian woman punched on the subway really feels pain.  You and I really will at some point fall apart and our bodies will stop.  We get lonely.  We despair.

And God has felt those feelings too, in the flesh.  Jesus has felt all those things.  He has despaired.  He has suffered and felt pain.  He has been murdered. 

But he is not here, he is risen, just like he said.

God has raised Jesus’s body up because for God, death is no thing.

And that’s what the women at the tomb learn.

What would that mean for us if we really understood—believed—lived within God’s reality? 

As the theologian James Alison writes, “If God can raise someone from the dead in the middle of human history, the very fact reveals that death, which up till this point had marked human history as simply something inevitable, part of what it is to be a human being, is not inevitable. That is, that death is itself not a simply biological reality, but a human cultural reality marking all perception, and a human cultural reality that is capable of being altered... This nature of sin as related to death is simultaneously revealed as something which need not be…  the shape of [God’s] forgiveness stretches into what we are: we are humans tied into the human reality of death. We need no longer be.”

“The doctrine of original sin,” Alison says, “is the doctrine of the un-necessity of death.”

We are wrong about God and about death, Alison says, and not just wrong as in mistaken—but as in actively wrong.  Actively death dealing.  We are the ones causing death!

And yet God’s forgiveness, God’s plain showing us that we are wrong, is an opportunity.  For if we are wrong, then we can learn from Jesus what is true.  Because God forgives, because God wills love and life, because Jesus rises, we can change.  Death no longer has dominion over us.

All those systems of death dealing can be different.  We can live differently.

Racism and white supremacy is no thing to God.  To be sure, it breaks God’s heart and God feels that suffering.  But it’s not the reality of truth, of the will of God.  It does not have to exist!  It can be swept away!

Income inequality, disparity in healthcare outcomes, lack of access to education or food or clean drinking water is no thing.  It does not have to exist!  It can be swept away.

Mass incarceration, the divisions that separate us from one another and cause loneliness and despair, the anxiety and fear and hurt that we inflict upon one another is no thing.  It does not have to exist!  It can be swept away.

Even the decay of our mortal bodies, which seems so final to us through our lens of death, is no thing.  There is another reality, a greater truth, in which we live with God in everlasting life. 

Death means nothing to God.  The only thing that interests God is love, is life.  And God desires to love and to live with you.

Friends, what if this Easter we gave up on death and started to live for life?  What if we totally re-oriented our lives to live within the reality of the kingdom of God? 

That is what the resurrection is teaching us!  That’s what the women found at the empty tomb.

And here’s how we know they understood:  they went and told Peter and the others.  And then the told more people and more people and more and more  and more over two thousand years of history—and then someone told you.

And you’ve come here today to see that empty tomb.  And to hear the words of life, “He has been raised; he is not here!”

We have nothing to fear from death.  But we are called to live life.  Will you look into the empty tomb?  Will you go and tell?  Will you live in the knowledge of the resurrection?

Alleluia!  Christ is risen!

The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

+ + +

[1] The title and ultimately the argument about the nature of reality—the nature of creation and original sin—are drawn from James Alison’s book on resurrection by a similar, more apt title.  I am indebted to Fr Alison for his teaching on the crucifixion and resurrection.  James Alison, The Joy of Begin Wrong:  Original Sin Through Easter Eyes. New York: Crossroad, 1998, pp 115-119.  Last accessed online 4/3/21 at http://girardianlectionary.net/res/jbw_ch4a_jbw.htm.

[2] If there were ever a doubt about the importance of women as disciples in Jesus’s community and their constant presence there, this verse should settle it; Jesus told his disciples just after the last supper, when they had gone up to the Mount of Olives to pray, that  in Mk 14:28 that he would go to Galilee after his resurrection (Mt 14:28).  The young man in white asserts that the two Marys and Salome have heard this.  They were there.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

Washing Judas's Feet

The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Maundy Thursday
April 1, 2021

Having loved his own who were in the world, Jesus loved them to the end.

In the name of God: Father, Son, & Holy Spirit.

This is the second Maundy Thursday we’ve spent in isolation, distanced from one another, wearing masks and staying home.  I’ve missed being together in person for these liturgies of Holy Week.  I wonder what things you’ve been missing during the pandemic?  Perhaps being together in person, seeing friends, or being at dinner together are some of those things.

In tonight’s gospel we hear the story of a dinner party.  It makes me remember pre-COVID times when we could gather in person for potlucks or around the table for a meal.  When we could talk, laugh, and sing together.  The room seems strangely warm and inviting as I imagine Jesus and his friends reclining around the table together, eating and drinking.  They’ve come to Jerusalem to make preparations to celebrate the Passover, that joyous commemoration of God leading God’s holy people out of slavery in Egypt into a promised land.  They would have been excited to be together, safe from the outside world in the upstairs room they occupied.  Looking forward to the feast.

But before their meal that night, Jesus, whom they loved, did something strange.  He stopped and took off his robe and got a towel and basin and pitcher of water and washed each of their feet.

He got down close, on the floor, right up next to them.  He touched their feet as he bathed them and dried them off with his towel.  Not the clean, pre-washed, manicured feet that perhaps you’ve prepared for tonight’s footwashing at home, but dusty, dirty, hard working feet that have been walking around Jerusalem all day on errands.  Feet that have just stopped.  Bodies that have slowed down.  Spirits that have come together in that upstairs room.  Friends that love one another.

Having loved his own who were in the world, Jesus loved them to the end.

He washed their feet because he loved them.

Peter was probably a little older than some of the other friends there and he realized the disconnect between Jesus, the rabbi, the teacher whom they followed, putting himself in the role of a servant, and so Peter protested.  Lord, you can’t wash my feet! But Jesus insists, and Peter relents.  Jesus washes his feet because he loves him.

Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.

Jesus tells his disciples that they should love one another.  That slaves and masters are equal.  That all people are equally beloved.  That they should serve one another.  That they should love one another.

And then, in the passage from John that we would have read at mass yesterday, in the passage that tonight’s reading skips over, something strange happens.

Jesus tells his friends that one of them will sell him out.  That one of them will betray him.  Peter looks over at young John, reclining next to Jesus at table, and mouths, Who is he talking about?  What is he talking about??

John, who loves Jesus with all his heart, looks up and asks, Who is it, Jesus?

Jesus reaches out his hand, pulls a piece of bread from the common loaf, dips it in some oil, and hands it to Judas.  The one to whom I give this bread will betray me.

Judas flees, and the other friends are confused.  What could he mean?  Has Judas gone to run more errands, buy a lamb, make arrangements for the Passover celebration? 

But Judas knows what Jesus means, and Jesus knows what Judas will do.  And so Judas goes to the police and the military officials and arranges to have Jesus arrested.

What does Jesus do in that moment?

Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.

These friends – Peter who would deny even knowing him just a few days later; these friends who would fall asleep as Jesus wept in despair in the Garden later that night; even Judas, who was that very minute leading the Roman and religious authorities to set a trap for Jesus – these friends are the ones whose feet Jesus washed.  These are the ones whom he fed.

These are the ones to whom he said, when you gather like this, remember me.  Take this Bread.  It is my Body.  Take this cup.  It is my blood.  I am giving myself to you.  I love you.  I am giving you myself.

With Peter I think about the strangeness of Jesus’s washing his friends’ feet.  The strangeness of when we do that each Maundy Thursday.  Perhaps you’ll do that in your home tonight—wash your own feet or the feet of someone you love.  It’s intimate.  Perhaps it’s even uncomfortable.

It’s strange.  It’s too close.

We build barriers to keep ourselves safe from the betrayal of the world—from the betrayal of one another.  And that betrayal is everywhere. The death-dealing of Judas and Pilate and the Roman government is real.  What could be a gentle caress can instead be an act of sexual violence.  What could be a hand outstretched in help can instead be a knee on a neck.  What could be an offering of food or water can instead be a poisonous cocktail of chemicals leading to overdose and death.

The danger, the violence, the death dealing of the world we inhabit is real.  Evil is real. 

But Jesus loves the world.  Jesus loves it all.  Jesus loves even Judas.  Even you and me. 

And he gives himself away.

This is my body that is for you.  This cup is the new promise, the new relationship, in my blood.

Here I am.  I am yours.  I love you.

Tomorrow that love will take Jesus to the cross.  That love may mean some things die in us as well.  Perhaps we have to give up some parts of ourselves, some expectations, in loving Jesus.  In loving one another.  In loving the whole world.

But when faced with degredation, with violence, with death, what else is there to do but give ourselves away?  Give ourselves to Jesus?  Give ourselves to Love?

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another, Just as I have loved you.

Jesus washes Judas’s feet.  Jesus feeds Judas.  Jesus loves Judas.  Jesus is led to the cross and killed.  All in the name of love.

But Jesus rises.  For love is stronger than death. 

In fact, love is all there is.  Death is no thing in the face of Love.

You’ll hear later a setting of George Herbert’s poem “Love bade me welcome.”

The speaker doubts his worthiness, protests, cannot sit down with Love.  Just like Peter cannot get his feet washed. 

But Love invites him in, to sit at table.  You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat. 

And I did sit and eat.

Come and have your feet washed by Jesus.  Come and receive his Body which he gives for you.  See the terrors of this world fall away in the light of his embrace.  Come and receive his love.  Do not be afraid of the cross.  For there waits an empty tomb on the other side.

Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.

This is my Body, which is for you.

You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat.

Friends, with Love, there is no ending.  Only life everlasting.

Come and receive love.  And give it back to one another as a friend of Jesus.

Look and See

The Rev’d Armando Ghinaglia
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday
March 28, 2021

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

This Palm Sunday, we’ve entered into Jerusalem with Jesus, we’ve heard the crowds herald his coming, we’ve heard them call out to him as the Messiah. But by the end of our gospel reading today, we’ve reached his passion, crucifixion, and death. Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will scatter.

It’s notable that, with just one exception, all of Jesus’s male disciples have fled. Only the women remain: “Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome,” and “many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem.” The men have all felt the need to abscond, to save themselves. And I don’t mean that meanly or irreverently. Maybe they were afraid they were next. That’s certainly possible. Maybe they just couldn’t bear the sight of their friend strung up on a tree. How many of us could?

But the women—the women stay. And even though they are at “a distance,” they are “looking on.” They have not turned their eyes away from his suffering or the suffering of the world. More than that, as we hear in Saint John’s version of these events, Jesus’s own mother is there, looking on with them. “Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow.”

That should sound familiar to us. After Emmett Till was lynched in 1955, his mother, Mamie Till Bradley, demanded that he be brought back to Chicago, where she insisted on showing his mutilated body to the world: “Let the people see what they did to my boy.” “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”

Their call to us, as with any memorial erected to remember suffering, is one and the same: “Look and see.”

But looking and seeing aren’t enough by themselves. The Romans looked and saw. The white men who killed Emmett Till looked and saw, too. Throughout history and even now, plenty of people look upon and see lynchings and murders and atrocities. They take pictures. They create souvenirs. They send postcards. They shoot videos. They satisfy their cravings, and their hearts swell with cruelty and lust. And they care not one bit for the suffering they inflict. In the rare event they are held to account, they wail for their own misery over and above the misery they have brought upon others.

Looking and seeing isn’t enough. But it’s a start. So long as we close our eyes, so long as we avert our gaze, we can avoid confronting things as they are—in this world, at least. We retreat to our dens even as we hear Abel crying from the field. And yet, as God says to Cain in Genesis, “Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!” We don’t need the story to tell us what it is that God hears from the land. It’s the same timeless cry: “Look and see.” That’s the Lord’s own cry as he hangs on the cross, quoting from Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Or as the Greek puts it, “My God, my God, look upon me”—pay attention to me, draw near to me—“why hast thou forsaken me?” Look and see. Look and see.

Why? Surely not out of some morbid curiosity or fascination with pain and death; after all, Jesus comes that we might have life and have it abundantly.

But to look upon suffering in the world is to break ourselves out of our delusions: that we might find a way to save ourselves, that we might expect justice in full in this life, that this world is our home. And to look upon suffering in the person of Jesus is to break ourselves out of a final delusion: that God doesn’t care. When we look at the cross, it’s true that we see an innocent man condemned to be executed by the state for daring to challenge a kingdom founded on oppression and violence. But for us as Christians, what we also see is God sharing in the world’s suffering that he might transform it and make us new. As the image of Christ says in Shusaku Endo’s novel Silence, “It was to be trampled on by [others] that I was born into this world. It was to share their pain that I carried my cross.”

As Christians, we know that the story doesn’t end there. We know that the God who raised Jesus from the dead will give life to our mortal bodies also. We know that sin and death have no dominion over us, even though we live as though they do so often. We know that Easter is coming soon—and with it, the Resurrection, and vindication for the oppressed and judgment for the oppressor, and life everlasting and the joys of heaven. And nothing should deprive us of looking forward to these things by faith with great longing.

But for now, we are in Passiontide. Jesus’s ultimate triumph over death does not make his suffering—or that of the world—any less real. So may we look and see. May we take our place alongside the women who followed Jesus to the last. May we stand with them and with those in every generation who have borne witness to human dignity and God’s presence in the midst of utter inhumanity.

Long ago, Archbishop Michael Ramsey wrote that

Like the Christ, the Church is sent to execute a twofold work in the face of [human] sufferings . . .; to seek to alleviate them, to heal them and to remove them, since they are hateful to God—yet, when they are overwhelming and there is no escape from them, to transfigure them and use them as the raw material of love . . . [that they might] become the place where the power of God is known.

May we do likewise.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Come and See Jesus

The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Fifth Sunday in Lent
March 21, 2021

In the name of God: Father, Son, & Holy Spirit.

Today’s gospel passage is situated almost where we are in the calendar year, just  a week later; Jesus has entered Jerusalem to prepare for the Passover; we’ll celebrate that entry next week at Palm Sunday.  And among all the other people who have come to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover are some Greeks—perhaps God-fearers—gentiles who are interested in learning more about the God of Abraham and Sarah; or perhaps they’re gentile converts to the Jewish religion; or perhaps Jewish people who live outside of Jerusalem in the Mediterranean diaspora in a place where Greek is the standard tounge.  Or perhaps they’re all three!  We don’t know anything about them—except that they seek out out Philip and say to him:

“Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”

Perhaps they’ve heard the stories about this Jesus fellow—the crowd that greeted him with palm branches when he entered Jerusalem, the crowds that always seem to gather around him when he preaches, the promise of a new way of being in the world, a different set of values—something he talks about as the kingdom of God—and maybe they’ve even heard the fantastic stories of his friend Lazarus, who people said was dead but now is alive.  Maybe they’ve even heard the rumors that Jesus will be taken into custody by the governmental authorities.  The tension, the excitement around Jesus is so palpable—and so this Passover they’ve come to Jerusalem, and they seek out Jesus’s group of friends, they find Philip, and they say to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”  The Greek idein implies more than just seeing, gazing upon—they want to see Jesus, to perceive him, to come to know him.   They want to get to know what it is that Jesus is about—what it is that Jesus is showing.  They want to get to know Jesus.

And that’s what everyone’s looking for, right?  Evelyn Underhill, the 19th C Anglican theologian, wrote to Archbishop Cosmo Laing on the eve of the Lambeth Convention to say that God is the most interesting thing about religion, and people are hungry for him.

That’s what people are looking for.  To know God.  Not to know religion; not to “go to church,” not to adopt a moral or ethical system, but to know the ground of all being, the source of all love, to know that they, that you and I, are profoundly loved, that our lives have meaning, and that there is more than the brokenness we see.  We are longing to know God.  And we meet him in Jesus.

And so these Greeks, they could be you and I, have traveled up to Jerusalem.  To meet Jesus.

Somehow Jesus knew that this would be a transforming moment—for his ministry, for these Greeks, and for the world around them all. 

And what does Jesus say to them? 

“Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.  Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”  (Jn 12.24-25)  Part of what the Johannine writer is saying here is pointing us to the inevitable death of Jesus in just a few days on the cross.  These words of Jesus prefigure his own death, his own murder, his own crucifixion. 

But, if the Greeks made it to see him, and he is speaking to them in this discourse, and I think the implication is that he is speaking to them, then the words have some meaning for them as well beyond the predictive foreshadowing, the veiled prophecy.  The words have implication for the Greeks—and for us as well.

When Jesus first talks about life he means our will, our choices, the way we live in the world—the orderedness of the universe, the systems in which we live.  But when he refers to eternal life, he is talking about zoe, how we live both physically and spiritually.  How it is that we can live as resurrected people, how we can live differently, even in the world around us.

Jesus is telling them about the kingdom of God come near.  That things can be different.  That the ultimate reality is different.

Do you worry about change?  Do you think perhaps we can’t change?

Jean Vanier was the founder of the L’Arche movement, a network of communities for people of difference.  While his legacy is complicated, his writings I still find useful.  Vanier tells a story of a friend who had completed his PhD and just gotten a promising job when he was diagnosed with a brain tumor.  The operation that saved his life also impacted his brain functioning; he was no longer able to read.  It took several years of anger and several years of processing this new way of being, but eventually his friend found that he had another gift—being with people—listening to them—and he became a counselor.  Vanier writes, “Instead of books and ideas, he began to discover the beauty of people.  His life was transformed as he entered into a new life of openness to others.”[1] 

We are infinitely adaptable.  Our systems are not concrete, solid, but rather plastic, mutable, re-formable.

The kingdom of God is not an idealized pipe dream. 

It’s simply the reality that we have not yet understood or envisioned.

It’s simply the truth that we have not yet embraced.

It’s where we begin to live—when we see Jesus.

Robert Willis, the dean of Canterbury Cathedral, was once asked, “What is the purpose of the Cathedral at Canterbury?  What do you do here?”  His response was brief, short, clear.  “We show people Jesus.”

That’s what we’re doing in Church, friends.  We are being the Body of Christ.  We show people Jesus.  In a world where there is so much visual stimulation, where there is so much competing for our time and attention, where we can barely catch a breath much less manage to take an hour or two out of our busy lives even on a Sunday, what are we doing here?  Could it be that we are looking for Jesus?  Could it be that we are being invited to show people Jesus?  Can it be that we are invited to see Jesus ourselves?

To ask the question another way, what are you looking for today?  What are you longing for?  What are you seeking?  Are you willing to take a chance on a different life, a different will, a different set of priorities?  Are you willing to walk with Jesus in the shadow of the cross?  Are you willing to see Jesus?

Everything in the streets of New Haven will tell you how to live—what’s important—what matters.  But our Lord offers us something radically different—a different way of living, of being, of existing in the world, in relationship with one another, in covenant with God.   A life redeemed, restored, whole.  It looks different from the life that the systems of this world promise.  And it is beautiful.

Sir, we would see Jesus.

He is there, on the cross

he is there, in the resurrection

he is there, in his holy spirit

He gives himself to you.

give him your life

give him your love

give him your all

Come and see Jesus.

+ + +

[1] Jean Vanier, Drawn Into the Mystery of Jesus Through the Gospel of John: Paulist Press, 2004, pp 211-212.

Take Up Your Cross

The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Second Sunday in Lent
February 28, 2021

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

 What do you think of when you hear these words of Jesus?

 For me, I often see that image of Simon of Cyrene carrying Jesus’s cross, the fifth station…  I imagine him bowed down by the weight, the crossbeam cutting into his shoulder, feeling unsteady moving forward, dragging the heavy cross along with him.  I imagine him sweating.  I wonder if I could bear the weight, if I would stumble, if I’d give up.

 The sheer weight of the cross feels oppressive.  Almost self-injuring. Why would I willingly take up the cross—literally like Simon, or metaphorically in whatever way Jesus is asking?  How can  I understand what Jesus means?

 I’m sympathetic with Peter, who tells Jesus to stop talking about the cross.  To choose self preservation.  Lord, you’ve got to quit talking about dying!  The Messiah cannot be tortured and killed!  This isn’t good for our movement, Jesus!  Frankly, Peter gives good advice.

 But Jesus says that Peter has it backwards. That he’s thinking with a human lens, not divine sight.  That he’s seeing things inside out.  There’s another way to see, to know, to understand the truth.

 Have you ever had a moment when you realized the perspective you hold isn’t the only one?  Maybe isn’t even the right one?  A moment when you have something of an epiphany, that you see a whole different possibility, an opportunity, a change in what you had assumed was the nature of reality?

 I experienced a perspective shift like that earlier last week.

 I was on a call with a task force last week talking about the impact of substance abuse and the work of harm reduction in New Haven.  Especially in the wake of so many overdoses in the past week in New Haven and Fairfield counties, it seemed like an especially opportune time to think about harm reduction. 

 The invited guest presenter on the call was Dr L J Punch, a specialist in community medicine using a trauma-responsive, patient-centered treatment model.  Dr Punch was an undergraduate at Yale and trained for medicine at UConn.  Their specialty was initially trauma surgery, but after seeing so many bodies—especially black male bodies—pass through the Emergency Department, Dr Punch grew weary of patching up bodies damaged by the trauma of guns, drugs, and violence—and wanted instead to spend time looking at the systemic trauma of racism and the devaluing of human lives that led to the presenting issues in the Emergency Department.

 So they traded in their scalpel and sutures for a van and a hot dog warmer—and set out into the East Loop of Delmar Boulevard in Saint Louis to share a hot dog—and to sit and talk with people—especially black men—there.

 By starting with the question, “What’s going on for you?” rather than diagnosing and treating presenting issues, Dr Punch was able to get at the roots of suffering:  “I need housing.”  “I’m afraid for my safety in my neighborhood.”  Each person, each with a different story, each needing to be heard, to be valued, to be seen. 

 Dr Punch’s treatment modality moved from repairing damage done to bodies—to trying to reduce and prevent harm before it happens.

 Their toolkit went from prescriptions and surgeries to housing, trauma tourniquet first aid kits, clean needles, volunteer opportunities, and listening ears. 

 The organization Dr Punch founded is called “The T,” a network of professionals and volunteers offering support to those “recovering from the impact of trauma”—a network of caring people “bringing harm reduction, health education, wellbeing resources and love to [their] region, one person at a time.”

 This was such a shift in thinking for me—moving the locus of authority from the medical professional to the person who was experiencing trauma; moving blame away from the person who may have overdosed to a system, a worldview, that causes trauma that might lead one to seek escape in opioids; moving from merely blaming the one who pulls the trigger to focus on the damage done to the bodies and souls of those who are in the crossfire.

 Dr Punch’s work sees those who suffer from trauma, who have experienced trauma, not as victims, but as beloved, valued members of community who deserve help and support to overcome an undeserved situation.

 For a child who grew up in the Reagan era, when what we offered best was a philosophy of “Just say NO” to drugs, the work of the T seems to me to be a  clear eyed acknowledgement of the world’s evil that is simultaneously undeterred by it.  It feels like a move from blaming victims of trauma to offering reckless, wanton mercy to all of Creation. 

 It feels a little like what Jesus is inviting us into.

 I share that story as an example of how my perspective on gun violence, on drug addiction, on overdoses, on homelessness—on all our societal ills—was given a different focus.  Maybe even re-oriented.  I saw possibilities and hope in hearing Dr Punch’s stories.  And my focus changed from the damage, the suffering, the sin, to the value of the individual people themselves.

 Perhaps Jesus is inviting us to a shift in perspective; to a different lens; a different focus. 

 Perhaps that’s why Peter’s remonstrations were rebuked.

 What if Lent is more than a mere invitation to be better, to sin less often, to be good?  What if Lent is an invitation to see the world differently?  To relate to one another differently?  To think differently about ourselves and Creation?

 What if the cross itself is not the object of our focus—but the inevitable consequence of a fallen world that proclaims sin and death—and the resurrection the last word, the final truth, of the lie that Satan tells.

 Get behind me, Satan, Jesus says to Peter. 

 The radical love that Jesus has for the world, the reckless grace and mercy poured out like the blood from his wounded side, washing all Creation, restoring it, making it whole—that love is so challenging to the lie of sin and death that evil tries to stop it.

 But it cannot be stopped.  Because only Love is the final truth.  Only Love will prevail.

 What if Lent is the invitation to believe in the kingdom of God—and to mark, to name, to identify as evil anything that doesn’t square with it.   The cross convicts evil, sin, and death—and shows them in stark contrast with the life of God.

 Gunshots, overdoses, trauma, and degradation – these are not the will of God. These are not of the kingdom of God.

 But bodies are.   All bodies.  Black and white.  Addicted and whole.  Poor and rich.  Gay, trans, straight, and nonbinary.  Suffering and rejoicing.  All bodies are beloved. 

 Suffering is real in this world when we’re looking for the kingdom of God.

 But suffering is not the final word.

 Trauma can be unmasked for the lies that it tells.

 And wholeness and healing, mercy and love, can be offered in its place.

 That’s the work of the coming of the kingdom of God.

 That’s the lens we’re invited into.

 Get behind us, Satan.  Let us take up our cross—not out of guilt, or shame, or self-flagellation, but out of the realization that the world puts it on our backs.  With the sure and certain knowledge that it’s just for a time.  That the kingdom of God is about resurrection.

 With Simon we will come to Golgatha.  But with Jesus, we will come to heaven—to the very heart of God.

The Christmas Creche

The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Christmas Eve
December 24, 2020

What images do you associate with Christmas?  Perhaps it’s the tree, glowing softly with lights in your family’s living room.  Maybe it’s a groaning sideboard, full of turkey or Christmas roast or ham and sides.  Maybe it’s presents stacked under the tree, waiting to be opened by eager family members on Christmas morning.  Perhaps it’s singing carols by candlelight at midnight mass, surrounded by friends and loved ones.

Whatever your Christmas memory is, it’s a likely bet that it’s different this year.  2020 has been hard for us all.  We can’t gather as we have before for meals; we can’t sing together at mass; perhaps even your Christmas packages have been delayed under the strain of shipping services and the post office.

There’s a lot we may miss this Christmas.  But one of the things that has carried over for me is the Christmas crèche.  We started the service with it—and I hope you got a glimpse of what the crèche looks like here in the choir at Christ Church—and perhaps you’re gathered around your own crèche at home.

The Christmas crèche is a wonderful memory for me; adding the baby Jesus to the manger each Christmas eve, arranging the animals and shepherds around the holy family, and starting the magi on their journey in another room, moving each day closer and closer to arrive at the Epiphany. 

So much of the story of Jesus’s birth is captured in the figures of the crèche, our acting out of God’s story of the incarnation.

The crèche is built on that narrative from Luke—the trip to Bethlehem, the stable, the shepherds and angels gathered around the Holy Family and the infant child.  The Protoevangelium of James, attributed to James the brother of our Lord, fills out the details that influenced Saint Francis’s own staging of the nativity scene that’s come down to us today in our simplified plaster and wood scene.

I was once in a live nativity scene—not unlike Francis’s first crèche—with Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus on bales of hay, with a hastily constructed stable around, a donkey munching on the hay bales, a cow that wasn’t so sure she wanted to stay in the same place that long, a couple of sheep that smelled terrible, a host of shepherds in bathrobes with improvised staffs, and an angel perching precariously atop it all.

Things did not go as smoothly with that live nativity scene as with the nice sculptured scenes you may have in your homes, that we have here at church.  It was live and real, and animals are unpredictable, Mary gets cold, and babies get hungry.  Eventually someone brought hot chocolate which warmed my fingers which had grown cold against the metal of my shepherd’s crook.  It was a good experience.  And I was glad when it was time to go inside.

The real thing was different from the model we gather around tonight. 

That’s the thing about my image of the Christmas crèche, isn’t it.  It seems sanitized, cleaned up—frozen in time just after the moment of Jesus’s birth.  Everything is flattened out, tied up neatly together.  There are the shepherds, the angels are singing about peace on earth and goodwill, and the Messiah is born.  Everyone is happy.  Everyone is full of hope.  In the soft glow of starlight, of candlelight, the light rustle of angels’ wings filling the air, the dangers and problems of the world fade away far into the background of the scene.  Everything is light and love.

It’s not a bad scene.  It’s not a bad feeling.  After all, the incarnation is about God’s love revealed in human form.  It is full of hope!  It is full of joy!

But that version of history leaves out the rest of the story.

Think about it.  If Mary and Joseph were alive now, what would Mary say if Joseph said to her, his fiancée, that they had to take a bus to Hartford to register to be taxed.  Mary is probably fourteen years old, nine months pregnant, and travel is none too easy for her.  Maybe she’s sick in the mornings, or maybe at night.  It’s cold outside, and she didn’t plan on making this trip.  In fact, she didn’t plan on having a baby!  That’s still a mystery: how did this happen?  Mary asks.  She’s young, and afraid, and the rest stops on the way to Hartford don’t have clean restrooms.

When Mary and Joseph arrive in downtown Hartford, the Holiday Inn doesn’t have any rooms to offer; they’ve had a COVID outbreak and are closed for two weeks.  But a helpful garage attendant says they can sleep in an empty office in the parking garage; there’s just a cot there, but they’ll be warm.

This is not where Mary wants to be.  It’s not what she hoped for, not what she planned.  But there, in that little cramped office, with a heater that’s alternately too hot and not hot at all, she begins to go into labor.  The contractions are so fast, so close together, that she knows the baby will be born soon.  But Joseph’s forgotten to pay his cell phone bill, and so his service is cut off, and he can’t call for an ambulance to the hospital.  It’s now or never, the baby is coming, right there on a cot in a parking garage.

In and amongst the pain and fear, Mary delivers her child, wipes him clean as best she can with some spare t-shirts in Joseph’s bag, and holding him close, hears his first cries.  The garage attendant and a maintenance worker come by, wearing their masks, to see what’s happened, and gradually a small motley crew of folks who live in the park nearby wander in, seeking some warmth, and find the family there.

Everyone feels better—a baby has that effect after all—and everyone has a little more holiday cheer on that cold night, in that unexpected place, sharing together just a moment of humanity in a cold, dark world. 

Gradually they wander off to their own paths, but they hold in their heart that moment of strange humanity, that baby born in an unexpected time, in an unexpected place.  They remember the hope in their hearts for just that moment.

Maybe that retelling of the Christmas story seems strange or too rough, the parking garage too dirty, the circumstances too strange.  But I suspect everything seemed rough, strange, dirty, and frightening to Mary that night two thousand years ago in Bethlehem.  And maybe, this year, that’s the message we need to hear again.  Maybe that’s part of the message of the angels—part of the message of the incarnation:

That God comes, not in an understandable way, not at a convenient time, not to a world that is beautiful and filled with hope and light,

But that God comes precisely in a moment of pain, blood, sweat, and even fear.  God comes into a world just like our own—a world full of danger and death dealing.  And God comes as a vulnerable infant, not magically protected from the evil of the world, but risking the reality of it—just alongside us.  With us.  As one of us.

God so wants to be with us that God comes and risks everything, even death by execution, to show us God’s love.

I like the sanitized version of the crèche, the beautiful soft light of candles and the story of the beauty and holiness of the incarnation that it tells.  But I suspect it was rather more rough and tumble than that. 

I suspect that Jesus would be right at home in the mess we live in right now—be wearing a mask like the rest of us, aware of the danger of disease, the evil of gun warfare in our streets, the despair of addiction, the horror of racialized violence and oppression.  He knows the feelings of mothers that worry for their black and brown boys, fathers that worry for the safety of their daughters, children that worry about COVID, and grandparents that miss their grandchildren.  He knows the plight of the unemployed waitress, the harried postal employee, the teacher struggling to reach his students on zoom, the emergency room nurse, and the doctor who’s just taken off his scrubs and mask and face shield for the day. 

That’s the real world.  The one where animals smell and people get sick and bullets fly and death is real.  And it’s exactly into that world—the messed up one that we know—that Jesus comes.

Make no mistake—Mary was afraid that night.  The shepherds were alarmed by the angels.  Joseph was probably nervous, too; it wasn’t his plan for Mary to give birth in a stable, after all.  But the angel says, “Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.”

Fear not, my friends in Christ.  God has come among us, this savior, this infant in a manger—two thousand years ago, and in this place, in this time.

God has come into the mess of the world—the real world that we know.  And God is saving it. This is the world into which he comes.  You are the one to whom he comes. 

May the fearless, loving, joy-filled peace of Christ dwell in your heart this night and always.  

O come, let us adore him, Christ the Lord.

Rejoice Always

The Rev’d Armando Ghinaglia
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Third Sunday of Advent
December 13, 2020

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

Rejoice. That’s the word for today, isn’t it? In Latin, we read elsewhere, “Gaudete in Domino semper,” Rejoice in the Lord always. Always! That’s the message in all of our readings today, on this third Sunday of Advent, Gaudete Sunday. That’s the message in our rose brocade vestments, in our rose-adorned chapel, in the rose-colored candles on our advent wreaths. The rose is a reminder that this Sunday we look to the most explicitly cheery of the last four things: heaven. We should probably relish it while we can; next Sunday we turn to our last theme: hell.

For now, though, we’re called to rejoice. But I’ll be honest with you: I’m not in a mood to rejoice this week. My mind is still on our readings from Isaiah over the past couple Sundays. “All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it.” This pandemic continues unabated. Sure, there’s a vaccine; there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. But about twenty thousand Americans died of COVID last week. Like so many of you, I’m doing my best to avoid getting it. I don’t want to face its effects, but more than that, I don’t want to pass it on to my parents or my wife or others. But closer to home, on Tuesday, my family had to make the heartbreaking decision to put our dog of five-and-a-half years to sleep. We were hoping and praying he’d make it to Christmas, to New Year’s, just a few more months, despite his body shutting down before our very eyes. But it didn’t turn out that way. What we’d give to pet him and hug him and hold him again. That’d be the best Christmas gift of all. And I can only start to imagine what it’s like for those of us who’ve lost family or friends in this season, whether it happened this year or last year or decades ago. As someone rightly pointed out in one of our adult forums, it’s one thing to make peace with our own deaths; it’s another thing to make peace with the deaths of those we love. So, I hope you’ll forgive me when I say I’m not feeling much rejoicing this week. This week feels more like that verse from the funeral liturgy: “In the midst of life, we are in death.” When I hear the scriptural command to rejoice always, what comes to mind at first is a lament from the Psalms: “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”

Tuesday late afternoon and evening, as we prepared for that awful last appointment at the vet’s office, a kind of abbreviated litany emerged in my mind. And it echoed constantly in those terrible hours before and after sunset: “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”[i] “Blessed be the Name of the Lord : from this time forth for evermore . . . . from the rising up of the sun unto the going down of the same,” “[t]he Lord’s Name [be] praised.”[ii] Blessing and praise for a rescue animal once spared from death. Blessing and praise for his companionship and our memories. Blessing and praise for the good things and the bad. Blessing and praise, in life and in death. Blessing. And praise. And great sorrow. Because they can all exist together.

“When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,” our psalm today says, “then were we like those who dream.” Yes, indeed. But they were also as those who mourned. To be sure, their eyes were fixed on Jerusalem, their once and future home. And maybe they learned a lesson from Lot’s wife, who turned into a pillar of salt when she looked back at Sodom. But I find it hard to imagine that none of these exiles glanced back, not for the sake of Babylon or their captivity, but for the sake of their departed and their memories. These were people who sowed with tears, who buried their dead—their parents, their siblings, their children—in Babylon for centuries. Blessing and glory and praise be to God—and weeping, as so often happens when people manage to escape suffering or death.

When Saint Paul tells us to rejoice always, he’s not telling us to ignore this sorrow. This isn’t about pretending to feel a certain way all the time, or acting as if nothing bad has ever happened to us. Joy in this world is always punctuated by grief, because life in this world is always punctuated by death. But another way to think about this command is to see it as an invitation, an invitation to rejoice, even among things that are passing away.

Gaudete Sunday reminds us that our feelings and circumstances aren’t the ground of our rejoicing. We’re not called to rejoice because we feel good; we’re called to rejoice because the Lord is near.[iii] In one sense, the Lord is near to us here and now as the one who has created us, preserved us, and blessed us—as the one who listens to our cry, whether or not we perceive it. In another sense, the Lord is near in that Christ will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. And in that second coming, Christ will restore all things and save all creation from the last enemy to be destroyed: death.

All of that is plenty reason to rejoice with “laughter” or “shouts of joy,” as we read in our psalm today. If we’re not feeling it, that’s okay, too. Grieving isn’t incompatible with rejoicing. After all, rejoicing is about giving thanks to God for all God’s gifts. And grief, so often, is about acknowledging just how significant those gifts were once they’re gone. As Christians who await Christ’s coming, we live in a strange land. Sometimes the Lord’s song is a song of victory and exultation, a bold song in major key. Sometimes it’s a song of lament, as it were in minor. But even in lament, God invites us to give thanks for what once was and now is no longer: “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

In its own way, that counts as rejoicing, too.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[i] Job 1:21 (KJV).

[ii] Ps. 113:2–3 (Coverdale).

[iii] Phil. 4:5.

Death Be Not Proud

The Very Rev’d Dr Andrew McGowan
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The First Sunday of Advent
November 29, 2020

Almost four hundred years ago, late in another November, the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral London was dealing with a epidemic. With no interactive graphs or websites to visit and reload endlessly, his access to the daily statistics consisted of "plague bills,” posters displayed daily, and the seemingly endless tolling of bells.

However the Dean himself - John Donne - was also sick, and thought for some days he would die as so many others were doing. From his sickbed, he wrote a set of Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, reflecting on his own experience and what was happening around him in the public health crisis. It most famous words are these:

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.” (17, Meditation)

These few lines suggest a kind of compassionate solidarity, urging us to a sense of deep connection when others die, or might; but reading further in Donne’s meditations we find his real point is not just compassion for others, but the necessity of attention to the self; for both will die. In the prayer that follows that famous meditation he says to God:

"I humbly accept thy voice in the sound of this sad and funeral bell. And first, I bless thy glorious name, that in this sound and voice I can hear thy instructions, in another man’s to consider mine own condition; and to know, that this bell which tolls for another, before it come to ring out, may take me in too.” (17, Prayer)

Donne recovered this time and so his words were published; death was not just fate but his reflections on it were a rare gift. There is a tradition that sermons for the Sundays of Advent concern the “four Last Things,” in Latin quattor novissima, which could more literally be translated the four “latest” things, four things that are on the way, Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell. And so yes, today’s cheery theme is Death.

This may seem even less a popular choice that otherwise; it is not surprising that the world, even in a more regular year, starts clutching at the straws of seasonal jollity around now, since the gloom even of a normal winter can indeed oppress. This year more than others there could an understandable tendency to seek distraction.

The truth however is that the most consoling thing we could do in a world overshadowed by death is to address death squarely, informed by Christian hope.

Death is of course the “last enemy” as St Paul says, the adversary whose grip on our lives is real at all times, but from which we are inclined to look away because we see him or her as in fact an insuperable force. Our contemporary infatuation with material security extends to a sort of delusion about death. We tend to think we can actually avoid or defeat death ourselves, and use the tools of power and wealth to insulate ourselves - convincingly only in the moment, since death always waits. And to entrench our deception, we often segment even our society by age and vulnerability so that death does not wait on our doorstep with its daily reminders. We toll no bells, but just “celebrate life” as it ends, looking away from how it ended, but not forward past the door.

This year however death has broken down the door and marched in. Our choice then is whether to keep looking away, or to face it and see how different life might be, if death itself cannot be deferred for some many even while its ultimate defeat is assured. For we have a reason to think that death is not the force it pretends to be.

John Donne had gone on to say, of that same tolling bell, "for even that voice, that I must die now, is not the voice of a judge that speaks by way of condemnation, but of a physician that presents health in that. Thou presentest me death as the cure of my disease, not as the exaltation of it” (Med. 18)

Another extraordinary sickbed composition, the Canticle of the Sun written by Francis of Assisi late in the year 1224, culminates with the praise of God even in and through death:

"Praised be You, my Lord,

through our Sister Bodily Death,

from whom no living man can escape."

This notion that death could be viewed differently - if not quite as good, then at least put in its place by a faith that refuses to see it as sovereign - seems very odd to us, but this may be our fault not Donne’s or Francis'. A different view of death is at the heart of the Gospel. And it all depends on a God whose reality exceeds that of death.

It is not that death is good in itself or in absolute; death must be defeated or rather the death of death must break into our history in ways that it has not and cannot yet. Masks and vaccines can prolong life and defer death but they cannot defeat it. And so in this mortal life, death has its place that must be granted. While we like others in our community rightly wish to affirm life and protect ourselves and others from the ravages of the pandemic as well as from violence and other unnatural events, what may distinguish us is not a particularly religious basis for this general view, but faith that death itself can be confronted, and its all-powerful claims refuted, because we believe that God’s love for us does not end in death.

Perhaps John Donne’s other most famous piece of religious writing is a sonnet to this very effect:

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

This Advent we will of course soon enough shift our thoughts to the coming of Christ as a child. The associations of warmth, tenderness and life are all real and true. Yet Christmas too celebrates what Donne and Francis recognized - Christ did not come into the world merely to be material but to be mortal. We will come to the manger to adore, not because God is with us visiting, or even as taking on physicality, but as taking on mortality; with us unconditionally in the worst of what we experience as fragile beings. God will die too. God is in the emergency rooms and in the testing centers, among the foolish and the wise, not steering around death but present with us at every end, with the tolling of every bell.

Donne’s sonnet finishes:

One short sleep past, we wake eternally

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

Our Advent hope does not avert its eyes from the pandemic, or promise merely to distract us; facing death in the eye and knowing it will claim us too, we are freed from fear of death. We defend life and health with all our strength but do so knowing that there is one who has gone before us, who died and rose again, and who shall change our mortal body that it may be like his glorious body. Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord!

No Ordinary Time

The Rev’d John M. Kennedy
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Third Sunday after Pentecost
June 21, 2020

Good morning. I’m John Kennedy and I am serving on the summer staff here at Christ Church; during the academic year I’m a chaplain at the Kent School and Father Holton was gracious enough to invite me to be part of the team here during the summer vacation. It is an honor to be with you, even if only virtually.

We are getting in the swing of ordinary time right now, that season in the liturgical year initially between Epiphany and Lent and then, afterwards, between Pentecost and Advent. But of course, the times we are living in right are hardly ordinary; they seem anything but. For months now, we've been in the throes of a deadly global pandemic and, in more recent weeks, we've seen a flare up of civil unrest because of the reality of racial injustice, discrimination, and violence in this country. It is really no ordinary time. The reading we heard a few minutes ago from the letter of St. Paul to the Romans contains words and some ideas that I think speak to the heart of all this, especially as it concerns the Church and our distinctive vocation in the midst of turbulent and uncertain times. Paul writes:

"For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin.” (Rom. 6:5,6)

Enslaved to sin. It's perhaps impossible to hear these words about enslavement to sin without thinking of Juneteenth, an old holiday that has gained new resonance this year as it fell just this past Friday, a day that marks the end of institutionalized slavery in this country in 1865. It's hard to hear Paul’s words about enslavement without thinking about that history of slavery and its legacy (not to mention our history of displacing and killing indigenous Americans). As we know too well, this legacy of racism continues to the present day.
It continues through policies that discriminate. This legacy continues in attitudes that white Americans carry, either consciously or unconsciously, which view and lead us to treat our black neighbors as somehow inferior or secondary. It lives on in discriminatory policing practices that disproportionately target and impact Black Americans, all of this leading them too often to feel disenfranchised and even without hope in this country that has prided itself on being a land of opportunity for all. And so while slavery was officially abolished in the 1860s, America remains enslaved in sin. We remain enslaved in our original sin of racism. This sin denies the image of God in our brothers and sisters of different races and colors, and in so doing it dishonors our Creator and violates Christ's most fundamental command to love.

The sin of racism not only does violence to the oppressed; it also oppresses the oppressor because when I act or think in a way that devalues or pushes away people who look different than I do, I am giving into fear and ignorance and there is no joy and there is no life to be found there. When I deny the equality — the equal worth and dignity — of my black neighbor, I deny truth itself; I deny God. I am out of step with reality, and therefore I really have no chance of living in tune with reality, of living in harmony with God and with life. And so racism hurts everybody; it sells us all short. It keeps us from the fullness of life that is available, a fullness of life in which we all strive toward harmony, respect, cooperation; mutual help. And this is the vision that God ultimately has for this world. So racism is a spiritual as well as a social sickness, and the soul of our nation is still enslaved by it.

Now, thank God, seems to be a moment of deep reckoning with this legacy. But it's also a moment in which some are understandably feeling and expressing some skepticism, because there have been times of reckoning and apparent reparation before, times like the civil rights movement in the 1960s and the emancipation of slaves in the 1860s. Despite these real gains, the crushing weight of racial inequality remains all too real for far too many, and so some rightly wonder: how can we be sure this time will be any different? People don't want to get their hopes up in vain. The promise of change has let Black Americans down before. There is a real question about the limits of change, there is a real question about hope. What does the church say to this?

What does the church do about this? What is our response? Is it possible to truly be liberated from enslavement to the sin of racism? As Christians reckoning with the deep-rootedness of this social-spiritual sickness — with roots reaching not only into our nation’s history and policies but also into our hearts as individuals — as Christians reckoning with this, we ask: can we finally be free from sin to walk in newness of life? In our reading from St. Paul this morning, we hear him exhorting the Church in Rome to continue to walk in the newness of life to which they have been called in Christ; to not lapse back into sin, to not presume that because God is gracious that it's just as well to continue living selfishly and thoughtlessly. Paul is saying that to be a Christian is not simply to receive grace like hand sanitizer from a dispenser on demand whenever it’s needed to once again clean our hands so we can continue going about our business. No: the grace we received is to initiate us into a completely new way of being that is such a radical break with how we were before that this process, this initiation, this crossing the threshold can rightly be described by Paul as a death, of being joined to Christ's death, and being raised to new life with him in the power of his resurrection. Paul says there is no turning back; there is no down-time, no "off-time," or merely "ordinary time.” When we understand the Gospel message, when we truly receive the grace of God, we know that there is no going back.

When we hear Paul talking about being joined to Christ's death and being raised to new life in him we might think about baptism, and Paul does indeed refer to baptism here. And, of course, we might think about the great Paschal Mystery of Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection which we celebrate in Holy Week and Easter. I have to say I found it a little bit startling to be presented with this language and these ideas, these symbols, that seem so much like a part of the seasons of Lent and Easter, especially the Easter vigil with the baptism of new Christians, because here we are in ordinary time. This serves as a reminder, I think, that there really is no "ordinary time.” Ordinary time itself doesn't even mean “average,” “boring,” or "unremarkable" time; it simply means "counted time.” The word ordinary itself refers to the numerals used to count the weeks in this season, and so all time counts in the Christian life and, in a very real sense, it is always Lent and it is always Easter, and for that matter it is always Advent and Christmas. Every time we celebrate the Eucharist, we hear: "Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us." We are recapitulating the whole drama, the whole mystery, every week and hopefully every day of our lives; the fullness of the Gospel and the fullness of its hope, the fullness of good news is true every day and every moment.

It’s important to remember this because it means that the hope of the Gospel is not dimmed by anything, no matter how bad things get, no matter how hopeless they might look. Our hope is not in human beings anyway; “Our help is in the Name of the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth” (Ps. 124:8; Compline, BCP 127). And the Lord, as Paul writes elsewhere in Romans, pours his love “into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Rom. 5:5). When we respond to the grace we have received by loving the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our mind (Matt. 22:37), God removes our hearts of stone and gives us the sacred heart of Jesus, who never discriminates, who only loves. This means that Christians can be liberated from our enslavement to the sin of racism; our country of course is another matter but we are to seek the welfare of the land in which we find ourselves, as we read in the prophet Jeremiah (Jer. 29:7).

It matters to say this right now because good news isn't valued or even wanted in our culture. I read a recent interview with Bob Dylan and he was asked about Little Richard, the great architect of rock and roll who died recently, and then he was asked why he thought Little Richard's Gospel music didn't get more attention, and Dylan said this: “Probably because gospel is the music of good news and in these days there just isn’t any. Good news in today’s world is like a fugitive, treated like a hoodlum and put on the run. Castigated. All we see is good-for-nothing news. And we have to thank the media industry for that. It stirs people up... Dark news that depresses and horrifies you.” (Douglas Brinkley, “Bob Dylan Has a Lot on His Mind,” The New York Times, June 12, 2020) There is a lot of dark news, and of course a lot of it is true. And it’s important to pay attention to it, to understand it, and to respond to it; America’s sin of racism is real and it it must be reckoned with. But it’s at least as important to never end with the bad news. Our response and our calling as Christ's body, as Christ's physical, sacramental presence in this world, is to always be a people of good news, a people who bear witness to the indestructible hope that we have in God, a hope that is not dimmed, compromised or diminished by anything.

And so may we always walk in newness of life. This might look like literally walking by marching in protest and solidarity, or directing our money toward just causes, or taking time to learn about race in America, or walking peacefully upon the earth and in our dealings all whom we encounter. For all of us, it involves prayer. At all times and in all places, even and especially when things look hopeless — even and especially when there seems to be no place for good news — may we carry the bright hope of the Gospel with our steps, walking always in newness of life.

Portents in Heaven Above and Signs on the Earth Below

The Rev’d Armando Ghinaglia
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Day of Pentecost
May 31, 2020

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today we celebrate the feast of Pentecost, commemorating the descent of the Holy Spirit in tongues of flames on the disciples. This is the day the Church as we know it was born, a Church where there is “no longer Jew or Greek,” “slave or free,” “male and female.”

By this gift of the Holy Spirit, Christ promised to send peace into our hearts, a peace that passes understanding, a peace the world cannot give. In the words of Veni creator spiritus, the medieval Latin hymn you heard just a few minutes ago, “Thy blessed unction from above / is comfort, life, and fire of love. / Enable with perpetual light / the dullness of our blinded sight.”

That is the song we sing this day, as saints have done for centuries throughout the world. But as that hymn makes clear, the Holy Spirit isn’t a happiness dispenser meant to make us feel good when things look bleak. This is the Spirit, Jesus says, who “will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.” When the Spirit comes, as Peter notes in our reading from Acts today, quoting the prophet Joel, there are “portents in heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist.” This is the Spirit who has “spoken through the prophets.”

The prophets aren’t known for being a cheery bunch. They’re known for telling the truth. And it’s no wonder: the Spirit who comes down at Pentecost leads us into all truth, and the truth shall set us free. But the truth often hurts. That’s what happens when we build what we think is a magnificent house—or a community or a nation—but build it on sand: the rain falls, and the floods come, and the winds blow and beat against that house, and it falls—and great is its fall.

It can feel embarrassing and shameful to realize we’ve been building our houses or communities on sand all along. Maybe some of us knew the thing wasn’t really built for everyone; maybe most of us didn’t. The fall is frightening, just as frightening as the events taking place over the past few days in our nation. Our houses and communities are unstable. They are built on the sands of racial inequality. Once we realize they’re built on sand, it’s no surprise that there is no peace—that there is violence and destruction in our borders instead, some premeditated, much of it instinctive, all of it waiting to be aggravated depending on how we choose to respond to it.

If there were ever a day to cry out for peace however it might come, it would be today, when the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, descends to fill our hearts with peace. And to be clear, peace is exactly what we ought to ask for: peace that the world cannot give, peace that can come only from building our houses and communities on the rock—that is, on Christ. That is the peace for which we pray. And that peace is more than the absence of fire or looting; it’s the presence of God in our hearts assuring us that God is with us as walk through the fire and as we go through the deepest valley.

But it’s tempting all the same to confuse that peace of the Holy Spirit with the peace of man, enforced by violence and complacency. I’m sure most of us mean well if we’re hoping to return to a normalcy that never was—to houses re-built on the same old sands—but God is calling us to more: God is calling us to build on Christ, who is the solid Rock.

Calling for peace without justice makes us like those who oppressed Israel in Babylon, especially on this day of Pentecost. Of these, the Spirit speaks in the Psalms, “they that led us away captive required of us then a song, and melody in our heaviness: Sing us one of the songs of Sion.” But “how shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” It turns out it’s hard to sing the Lord’s song when you’re someone like George Floyd, who was one of our brothers in Christ, and is, even now in death. It’s hard to sing the Lord’s song when you’re facedown on the asphalt with a knee to your neck and three men on your back. It’s hard to sing the Lord’s song when you watch as another black man dies for nothing while a familiar storm of impotence and rage swells upon the streets and in our hearts. How long, O Lord, how long?

Those who insist on peace without justice, on returning to whatever normalcy there was before, bring to mind the words of the prophet Jeremiah, who surely spoke by the Holy Spirit: “From the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain; and from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely. They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ where there is no peace. . . . They shall be overthrown, says the LORD.”

By contrast, what God wants for us is this: “Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.”

Friends, I say this to you all just as much as I have to say it to myself every day when I’m tempted to think otherwise: Christ is the good way, Christ is the ancient path, in whom we will find rest for our souls. Sure, we need better laws and better regulations, more training and more diversity. Sure, we need less income inequality and more wage parity, more educational opportunities and fewer pipelines to prison.

But underlying it all, we have to own up to a simple reality: we live in a world under the dominion of the evil one. “Our struggle,” as Ephesians puts it, “is not against enemies of blood and flesh,” or at least not primarily against them. It’s not against mere laws or norms or issues that can be neatly solved by one political platform or another. Our struggle, we read in Holy Scripture, is “against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places,” and these forces infect our lives individually and collectively.

We have to recognize the corrosive effects of these forces of darkness within ourselves—the strongholds where they reside. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn writes, “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” But Jeremiah reminds us that “the heart is deceitful above all things,” and we must all ask God to destroy the piece of our heart that is stony and indifferent, to give us in its place a heart of flesh.

This God who replaces hearts of stone with hearts of flesh is the way out of our spiritual darkness—the physician of our souls, who for our sakes took on human flesh, who was cruelly and unjustly murdered, who endured the grave and was raised again, who ascended into heaven and sent forth his Spirit to renew the face of the earth. Christ Jesus has bound up sin and death, not only that we might live forever, but we might live as God has called us to live here and now.

If we want practical steps to take to address what’s going on around us, we need look no further than his example. Follow Christ, who as God nevertheless emptied himself and humbled himself, putting his trust not in his riches or his strength, but in God. Follow Christ, who met and knew his neighbors and understood them and loved them—especially people on the margins: women and strangers, the poor and the sick, those unable to walk or see or hear, tax collectors and prostitutes—even centurions. Follow Christ, who shed tears and wept in the face of suffering and death. Follow Christ, who was emboldened to intervene in the face of cruelty and violence to save souls and lives, who spoke of God’s decrees as he stood before kings and governors and was not ashamed. This, along with Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension, was the work that made God’s forgiveness in Christ real and open to us—and this is only bought at a price: our lives as we know them.

In Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s words, “cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”

What we seek—what the Holy Spirit calls us to—is costly grace, grace that flows from repentance. This, Bonhoeffer says, is “costly because it condemns sin” and “grace because it justifies the sinner,” “costly because it costs us our lives” and “grace because it gives us the only true life.”

Don’t be deceived. It doesn’t take martyrdom at the hands of the Third Reich to strive for that costly grace in the face of racism and violence. All of this is possible, in different ways and to different degrees, for each of us. Sometimes it involves standing up in certain ways. We don’t have to stand outside the White House as protestors; we just have to disown or confront abuse or racist language when we face it, not with like-minded abuse or self-righteous zeal that makes us feel good about ourselves, not when it’s easy to do on Facebook from the comfort of our homes, but with the knowledge that human dignity is what’s at stake. And more than that, striving for costly grace involves actually doing things for other people, not just saying the right words. Let’s try to follow Jesus in the ways I mentioned. Let’s come to conclusions with humility. Let’s be open to our neighbor’s needs and stand ready to meet them out of love for them and for the God who made us all.

The Holy Spirit empowers us to do this work, and the Holy Spirit calls us to do this, not merely so we can get rid of bad things in our communities and societies, but so that we can build up good things in their place. And if we do these things—if we turn from evil and do good, if we seek true peace and pursue it —our work will be like a house built on the rock that is Christ, guided not by the will of the flesh or by the will of man, but by God. That and that alone will bring us “peace at the last,” peace between us and God, peace between us and our neighbors, peace between us and our own souls.

Lord, send forth your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth. Amen.