Monthly Archives: April 2025

Bearing Witness to the Cross: A Sermon for Good Friday, 2025

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Good Friday

April 18, 2025

Good Friday is an emotional, complicated day. We are drawn into the story of Christ’s suffering, his torture and execution, and we are invited to enter into that story, to approach and experience it through hymns and devotions that have developed over the centuries. Some of those devotions can threaten to overwhelm us; some may repel us. But each of us in our own way is touched, moved, affected by it all.

We gather at a time when many of us are feeling other emotions: anger, fear, despair, as we watch events unfold around us, see the acts of domination and oppression that run roughshod over civic, legal, and moral norms. We may want to leave that cacophony outside on the streets but it invades our thoughts, troubles our hearts, and disrupts our sleep.

We feel impotence alongside all of our other emotions—impotence in the face of yet another mass shooting, impotence in the face of unjust deportations, the dismantling of the institutions that are supposed to protect all of us, and especially the most vulnerable, impotence as we watch the attacks on free speech, higher education, and all the rest, and the reluctance of those with power and influence to stand up against the onslaught.

Then we enter this service and encounter additional challenges. Our liturgy, and especially the gospel reading for today confronts us with one of the profound challenges for Christian faith in the contemporary world. The deep, persistent, ugly anti-Judaism of the Gospel of John is on full display in the passion narrative—the relentless repetition of “The Jews” in the gospel’s depiction of those who were opposed to Jesus and sought his death has had lasting consequences throughout history, in the Antisemitism that has persisted and led to ongoing acts of violence including the Holocaust. 

We are also all too aware of the weaponization of Antisemitism to quash dissent and free speech. At the same time, even on this most holy day of the Christian year, we are conscious of all the ways in which Christian imagery and faith have contributed to the marginalization and oppression of others. The power of Christian nationalism and white supremacy looms over the cross and all that we do here today.

Our liturgy today attempts to mitigate some of that damage. We are using an alternative liturgy approved by General Convention last year that attempts to undo some of the anti-Judaism of the language in the authorized Book of Common Prayer. The gospel we heard is an adaptation of John, rewording it to complicate the opponents of Jesus in the gospel—not just “the Jews” now but Jewish leaders, or parties within first century Judaism. It’s a start but perhaps seems either too little too late, or a futile attempt to stem the tide of Antisemitism and weaponized Antisemitism that threaten to overwhelm us all.

Given all that, given where we are today as we observe Good Friday, how might we find solace and strength in our liturgy to help make sense of our world, our lives, and inspire the courage to persist in our efforts to be faithful Christians? One possible answer to that question may lie in the example of Pilate. Known historically as a ruthless, even bloodthirsty tyrant, in the Gospels he is depicted as an unwilling and unwitting accomplice. John suggests Pilate knows Jesus is innocent of the charges levelled against him but seems impotent to resist the machinations and insistence of Jesus’ opponents. In the gospel of Matthew, we’re given the image of Pilate washing his hands and declaring his innocence of Jesus’ blood in front of the card, an image that has entered popular consciousness. This image of the feckless, spineless politician is one that seems to resonate today as too many of our leaders stand by haplessly as lawlessness and evil thrive.

While naming the Pilates among may offer us some consolation and schadenfreude, there are other ways of connecting the story we heard with the lives we are living today. As Jesus’ followers, we are called to follow him. In John’s telling, unlike the synoptic gospel accounts where Jesus is abandoned by his disciples on his last journey, the disciples accompany Jesus along the way. Peter still betrays Jesus but we’re told that the beloved disciple—I’ll leave them unnamed as in the gospel, is able to go with Jesus into the courtyard of the high priest. 

At the cross, the Beloved Disciple and Jesus’ mother Mary stand by watching and bearing witness, and other disciples, secret ones, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus are responsible for Jesus’ burial. Being present, bearing witness, these are important responsibilities. It may be that not all of us can take action, and the actions we can take may seem futile. But we can pay attention, bear witness, remember so that the voices of the vulnerable and suffering are amplified. In the gospel of Luke, we’re told that the women—the disciples—who followed Jesus from Galilee and ministered to him along the way, stood far off from the cross and watched and remembered.

To remember, to bear witness, to be present. As we contemplate the events of Good Friday, we see a deep and powerful paradox. On the one hand, we see the power of the Roman Empire bringing itself to bear on a lonely, humble teacher from Galilee who dared to challenge its power and might. On the other hand, we see Christ giving of himself for our lives and the life of the world. We see Christ, loving the world so much that he gives of himself, gives his life for us and in that giving shows us the power of love. 

We see Christ suffering and in his suffering we know he stands and suffers with all those today who are suffering—immigrants who have been deported for no reason, victims languishing in camps and prisons. He is present in the rubble of Gaza and Ukraine, on the streets of our cities. He is with us in our own lives, in our fears and despair. As we ponder the events of Good Friday today may we find in Christ, in the cross, love’s power to strengthen us to be present in a suffering world and to bear witness to the oppression and violence that surround us, and to minister to those in need. May we find in the cross the love we need to carry on.

Being loved, and loving, to the end: A Homily for Maundy Thursday, 2025

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April 17, 2025

A memory has been running through my mind these last few days as I’ve thought about Maundy Thursday. I grew up Mennonite, which was then, and likely remains a profoundly non-liturgical tradition. When I was a member, we celebrated communion only twice a year but our observance of communion always included footwashing. It was a ritual central to Mennonite identity in that era; so central in fact that one of the Mennonite colleges had as its logo an image of a basin and towel. The idea of service to others, Jesus’ commandment to imitate his actions, and to love others as he loved his disciples, were core values among Mennonites during the 50s and 60s. 

But what I’ve been thinking about is not the act of footwashing itself, as practiced among the Mennonites of my childhood. Rather, I’ve been remembering other aspects of the ritual, specifically the fact that our footwashing was accompanied by hymns. I recall my dad, who was a musician and often led music in the church, leading out in hymns as we watched each other’s feet,–although they were sung from memory and without accompaniment by musical instrument. Truth be told, while I vividly remember singing, I cannot for the life of me remember the specific hymns we sang.

Perhaps the reason I’ve been reminded of that memory is because it is the one thing that our service tonight shares with the traditions of my childhood, even though our singing during footwashing had been planned in advance and will be accompanied by the organ, thankfully.

 Footwashing is an intimate, deeply moving, powerful ritual and for us on Maundy Thursday, it is only one of several such powerful moments in our liturgy. I remember also the first Episcopal Maundy Thursday service I attended, and the wave of emotion that overcame me as I watched for the first time in my life the Stripping of the Altar. It evokes in so many ways the stripping of a body, of Christ’s body, for burial, and as I cleanse the altar later this evening, in near darkness, my gestures will  mimic the scourging that Jesus suffered at the hands of his persecutors and executioners.

Our watching is accompanied by growing apprehension as the ritual acts remind us of the events that follow. Some of them we will remember viscerally as our bodies move through traces of Gethsemane, Golgotha, and the tomb. As we move, our emotions build—the grief and despair, the guilt and shame. Our daily lives seem to be suspended, interrupted, as our attention focuses on the drama of Christ’s passion. But even as we know what tomorrow brings—Good Friday and crucifixion, let us linger for another moment or two, here on Maundy Thursday and with the Last Supper.

“Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” This brief sentence, the beginning of our gospel reading tonight, is an introduction not just to the events that follow immediately—the last supper and footwashing, but to everything else that we commemorate in the coming days, Christ’s arrest and trial, his execution and death, and yes, his resurrection. All of that, all of what will happen, what we dread will happen, is an expression of Christ’s love for his disciples and for us. But while we may want to move on to the bigger parts of the story; it all begins here. Friends gathered around a table, and a humble, intimate act of footwashing.

We see Peter’s response—his revulsion and unwillingness to allow Jesus to serve him in this way, to kneel before him. Less obvious from the text we heard, the footwashing takes place before Judas’ departure. So Jesus knelt down before the one who would betray him as he knelt before the other disciples. Perhaps that’s the most radical, least imaginable moment in the whole story. 

It’s a shocking act—in the first century as in the twenty-first. Peter’s response to it might be the same as ours, to imagine our teacher, our leader, the Son of God, kneeling down girding himself with a towel, and washing our feet. It makes us uncomfortable to do it ourselves, unaccustomed as we are to such acts of intimate service. Yet all around us people do such things—take intimate care of their loved ones who are unable to care for themselves. And many others do it for people they don’t love—because it’s their job, often ill-paid, thankless. 

But Jesus joins them in their labor and toil, washing the dust and dirt from the feet of his friends—an intimate, revolutionary act that presages everything else to come, and demonstrates, wordlessly, what it means to love his own to the end. It’s a concrete demonstration of his self-giving love; the emptying himself of his identity to become the lowest of servants, performing menial tasks, unworthy of a king, let alone of a God.

In our world, where power and dominance are demonstrated in acts large and small, forcing submission, demanding obedience, where bullying is the norm, for Jesus to fall to his knees in humility and service, upends our assumptions and shatters our expectations.

But more than that, Jesus invites us to join him on our knees, in service and love to others. This act of humble service combined with the meal at which it takes place, is the constitutive act of a new beloved community brought together in shared commitment to following Jesus. Forged by love, shaped by love, the community gathered at table together, shares in Christ’s body and blood, becomes Christ’s body, knit together by love. 

In these days of turmoil and suffering, as we watch our nation and world collapse, and we lose our moorings in the rubble and chaos of institutions and ideals, the acts we remember tonight, the rituals tonight bind us together with Christ in that new community. And what we do here may serve as example and witness to our neighbors and to the world—evidence of a faith in a Christ who comes as one to love and serve in humility, not to dominate and oppress. 

Protests and Palms: A Sermon for Palm Sunday, 2025

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I had to laugh when our procession came across the corner from W. Washington to N. Carroll before entering the church and we were confronted by the people on the capitol steps with their music and shouting. So fitting a reminder for our ministry on Capitol Square that whatever we do in worship and outreach, it is shaped by the context in which we find ourselves.

We know a thing or two about protests around here, don’t we? There have been the big ones—last Saturday, which many of you attended; others in the past like the women’s march in 2017 or the Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of the George Floyd murder. There were others, too many to enumerate, beginning with the Act 10 protests in 2011, which seems so long ago. And unlike the description of the protest given us by Luke, at the Act 10 protests there were at least palms, in the form of inflatable palm trees. 

There have been many others throughout the years, many of them quite small; a handful or so of demonstrators, or even occasionally, a single demonstrator, like the guy who walks around the square regularly shouting at Governor Evers. 

We don’t often associate protests with scripture—they probably seem a very contemporary thing—a product of activists like Gandhi or MLK jr who were able to gather thousands or hundreds of thousands, and in Gandhi’s case, bring an empire to its knees. 

And we certainly don’t imagine that the event we recreated this morning, traditionally called the Triumphal Entry, had anything to do with a political demonstration. But in the context of first century Judaism and of biblical tradition, what Jesus and his followers did that day was profoundly political. The reference to the prophet Zephaniah makes it clear: Jesus was connecting himself with the long-hoped for idea of the restoration of the Davidic monarchy. And that’s hardly an innocuous act in the days leading up to Passover, in a city crowded with pilgrims and with Roman soldiers present to keep violence at bay.

In case you’re still skeptical of the implications of all this, the next two things Jesus did was to pause, overlooking the city and predict its destruction. Then he entered the temple where he staged another demonstration, overturning the tables of the money-changers. Is it any wonder the Roman authorities were keen to get their hands on him? We see the very same impulses at work today—the silencing of protestors, the punishment of outspoken political opponents.

The story continues of course. We heard the passion of Christ according to the Gospel of Luke. All four gospels are eager to deflect our attention away from the confrontation between Jesus and Rome and for us to focus on the participation of the Jewish authorities in Jesus’ arrest and execution. That’s hardly surprising—what member of a tiny new religious movement at the turn of the second century would want to celebrate as their founder and the son of God, someone who was executed by the Roman Empire? But Luke goes a step further by inserting an episode in Jesus’ trial in which he appears before Herod Antipas. Herod seems to see Jesus as a comic diversion. Luke suggests he was curious about him, and the episode concludes with Herod and Pilate becoming friends, tyranny and empire consolidating their power.

But the story we heard, the story Christians have told for two thousand years is not just about a political protest, a revolutionary executed by the Roman empire. As important as that is, the story of resistance to evil and oppression, the story of Jesus is much more than that. We see the gospel writers interpreting it to give it cosmic significance, ultimate meaning for us in the twenty-first century as well as for his friends in the first. 

Two things stand out in Luke’s understanding of the meaning of the cross. First of all, Jesus’ words to the soldiers who crucified him: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Second, the interchange between Jesus and the two thieves, one of whom pleaded: “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And finally, the words of the centurion as Jesus died: “Truly, this man was innocent.”

Luke wants us to see Jesus as the innocent victim, whose death imparts forgiveness of sins to those who believe in him. It’s a powerful message that has resonated throughout the centuries down to our own time. Our hymnody, a millennium of Christian devotional practice and reflection lead us to that point; even our Lenten experiences. We recognize our sinfulness, we ask for forgiveness, we see Jesus’ death as a result of our own sins, and a way of unburdening us of those sins. As powerful as that imagery and devotion may be, as deeply moving as it may be for our own personal situations, there are other ways of seeing the cross, equally powerful and transformative.

In the reading from the letter to the Philippians, for example, Paul articulates a rather different understanding. Paul is likely quoting a hymn that Christians were already singing in worship, a hymn that reflects early understandings of Jesus’ death and resurrection. And here there is nothing of sacrifice, or sins, or guilt, or punishment. 

Instead, what Paul and those other early Christians emphasized was Christ’s self-giving and obedience: 

“Who though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but humbled himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on the cross.”

In the cross, we encounter God—not an angry or vindictive judge, but a God who emptied himself for us. In the cross, we encounter the self-giving God who became one of us, to show us the fullness of humanity, to remake us in God’s image. In the cross, we encounter God’s love.

As we journey through Holy Week this week, as we walk with Jesus through the streets of Jerusalem, to the last supper, to Gethsemane, to Pilate’s chambers and finally to Golgotha, may each step be an opportunity to experience God’s love in Jesus Christ. May this week be a journey into the heart of God’s love.