From The Guardian
From The Washington Post:
“The Myth of Thanksgiving” (Washington Post podcast): https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/the-myth-of-thanksgiving/
Also from the Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/11/04/thanksgiving-anniversary-wampanoag-indians-pilgrims/
You’ll need a Hulu subscription but Parma Lakshmi’s show on Thanksgiving the Wampanoag is very good: https://press.hulu.com/shows/taste-the-nation/
June 6, 2021
What an exciting day it is at Grace. After almost exactly fifteen months of live-streamed or recorded worship, some of us are back in person. Others are still joining us online—and as I’ve said before, I assume that we will continue to offer some form of online worship for the foreseeable future. Some of us aren’t able to join us in person; others will choose to join us from home or while traveling because of convenience. It’s a new adventure for us all and we will have to do the hard work of thinking how to incorporate everyone into our congregation.
What an exciting day, too, for Brandon and Kate. They’ve been waiting almost six months to have their daughter Mia baptized. We originally planned for a private baptism in November, but as COVID cases spiked we decided to delay it until a time when we could all feel more comfortable with it. This way, members of their family can be present
It’s lovely that we have a baptism today, on our first Sunday back for in-person worship. Not only does it bear witness to the newness of life in these difficult times, it is also a reminder to us of what we are about as God’s people, bringing into the body of Christ new members, witnessing to God’s love, and proclaiming our faith in the risen Christ. Our baptismal liturgy includes in it an opportunity for us to renew our own baptismal vows, to commit ourselves to each other as members of Christ’s body, and to renew our promises to grow more deeply as followers of Jesus.
There’s a creative tension at the heart of our understanding of baptism, especially infant baptism. On the one hand, it is a profoundly, intimately family celebration and event, linking families across generations with beloved and familiar traditions. That understanding was especially prominent in earlier generations when most baptisms were private. In the Episcopal Church, they were often conducted with only the immediate family and the priest present, often after Sunday services had taken place.
On the other hand, baptism is the full initiation of individuals into the body of Christ. It is a rite that brings us into fellowship and relationship with Jesus Christ and other members of Christ’s body. That aspect of it is emphasized when we all promise to help the one being baptized grow in the Christian faith. That’s why we now conduct baptisms usually at the principal Sunday service of Holy Eucharist, although we do make provisions as needed and to accommodate individual circumstances.
We see something of that same tension in today’s gospel reading. This is the first time we’re reading from the Gospel of Mark since Easter and after all those weeks in John’s gospel, we jump back into Mark’s very different story with a jolt that may wake us up.
We’re back fairly early in the gospel—chapter 3 to be precise. In the preceding chapters, Jesus has been on a preaching tour through the towns of Galilee, beginning with Capernaum. He has healed many people of their illnesses, cast out evil spirits, and called several of his disciples. His fame has spread far and wide and the crowds are becoming impressive. He has also aroused conflict around his interpretation of the law.
We see the effects of his healing ministry and the conflict he has already elicited here in this story. It’s an enigmatic story, full of drama, and leaving us with many questions as we listen to it. But I want to focus on the internal drama—or perhaps better put, the internal conflict between Jesus and his family members. A bit of that drama is downplayed in our reading because we pick up the story in verse 20. It’s not really clear to us that Jesus has come home, literally, to his house. That’s where the crowd presses in, so urgently that they are not able to eat. But, and this is important for what comes next, he and the disciples are not in the house, because his family comes out and wants to restrain him. They fear he has gone mad. To top it off, the religious experts have come down from Jerusalem to assert that he is not a messenger from God, but a servant of Satan.
That all this takes place around the house is significant. We have already seen that the private home is a place of refuge. Jesus went to his disciple Peter’s house after his initial public preaching and healing in the synagogue in Capernaum. But there too, he was beset by the crowds who wanted him to heal the sick. Later on in the gospel, we will see Jesus gathered with his disciples, but also with tax collectors and sinners, in people’s homes sharing table fellowship. Here, the house is a refuge, but it is occupied by family members who question his sanity.
Coming back to the end of the reading, Jesus is in the house, and his family members are outside. Being made aware of their presence outside, Jesus asks:
“Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”
We have been outside of this place these many months, clamoring to enter, wanting to return. For many of us, to be back inside this sacred building is a coming home. It is a sanctuary from the troubles and dangers of the world, a place where we connect with our deepest selves, with God, and with our fellow Christians. Yet many of us are still standing outside—for whatever reasons reluctant to return to services because of anxiety, vaccination status, or medical conditions that limit our freedom.
Others stand outside because of their alienation from God, because of the pain they have suffered at the hands of the Church, because they are not sure they are welcome here. Some may not feel welcome because they are different from us, racially or ethnically, socioeconomically, because of their sexuality or gender.
Even as Jesus embraces the household, the home, as a place of refuge, for himself and his followers, at the same time, he reinvents or reimagines the nature of the community that occupies the house. No longer is it a fellowship united by ties of blood; anyone “who does the will of my father” is a part of this new community, new family brought together by shared commitment to Jesus.
In fact, it may be misleading even to call what is being brought together by Jesus a “family.” Especially in our culture where the notion of “family” is contested and full of symbolic meaning, weaponized for political purposes and cultural warfare, when we call the church a “family” we risk setting up the same sort of barriers between “inside” and “outside” that are created by the walls of a church, or a house. When one’s experience of family is full of trauma, scars, and abuse, to be called into a new family of the faithful may be a barrier to hard to cross.
Still, we are a new community, created by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We are a new community that welcomes into its midst through baptism and confession of faith anyone who comes to us. We are a new community that is meant to model what it means to follow Jesus in the world. We are a community called by Christ, calling others to Christ.
As we reaffirm our baptismal vows today, as we bring into this fellowship a new member, as we gather, for the first time in many months in this place, face to face, and as we after a long fast, once again taste and see that the Lord is good, share in the Sacrament of Christ’s body and blood, may the bonds that unite us together be strengthened, that we may go from this place, to love and serve the Lord.
Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
The Lord is Risen indeed, Alleluia!
The traditional Easter acclamation rings hollow in empty churches today. Whatever joy we may feel on this Easter is tempered by the reality of our celebration. Instead of a church packed to the rafters, with most of us dressed in Easter finery; instead of brass, choir, and the voices of hundreds singing “Hail thee, festival day” and “Christ the Lord is risen today” we have soloists, recordings, livestreamed worship. Most of us are sitting at home, on our couches or at a kitchen table dressed in comfortable clothes or even, perhaps pajamas, with a cup of coffee instead of a hymnal in our hands.
Yet all around us are also signs of new life and reasons for hope. As the pace of vaccinations continues to increase, we can glimpse and begin to plan for life after pandemic, and lockdowns, and isolation. Spring seems to be on its way. The bulbs in our garden are beginning to show flowers, and there’s clump of daffodils blooming in the courtyard garden here at the church. We are also beginning to make plans to return to public worship in the near future.
Still, the waiting continues and many of us remain anxious about the present and the future, even as we chafe at the continued restrictions and limits on our activities. It’s a difficult time, an in-between time, a time of waiting.
The gospel of Mark was written in just such a time of waiting and anxiety; written for a community struggling to find a way forward in uncertain times, in the midst of violence, and as the old faith that had brought them into being as followers of Jesus was running up against new realities and new challenges.
The challenges facing Mark’s community are symbolized by the gospel’s ending, here, at the empty tomb. Mark leaves us hanging with the sentence: “And the women fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid.”
Now, this is no way to end a gospel, no way to tell the story of Easter and of resurrection. If you go to your bible and look up Mark 16, you will see that in most English bibles the Gospel of Mark doesn’t in fact end with v. 8, but has 8 additional verses, often set off in brackets or with asterisks. For while the earliest and most reliable manuscripts end with verse 8 and the women’s silence and fear, very quickly editors and copyists sought to provide a more suitable ending to the gospel, one that included appearances of the Risen Christ to the disciples.
But imagine those women as they came to the tomb. Mark tells us that they had come with Jesus from Galilee, that they had walked with him and the other, the male disciples, learning from, watching him as he healed the sick and cast out demons. Mark says that they had ministered to him along the way. They had heard him proclaiming the coming of God’s reign. They had been among the small group that had staged what we call “the triumphal entry into Jerusalem” casting their coats and tree branches on the road as Jesus entered the city riding on a donkey, a clear allusion to the Davidic monarchy.
They had watched as he turned over the moneychangers temples and silenced his opponents with clever debating tactics. And then, had they been there at the last supper? Mark doesn’t tell us, but they were at the crucifixion, watching from afar.
All their hopes were dashed; their grief at the execution of their beloved teacher and friend overwhelming. And like Jesus, they were probably alone. The male disciples, easily distinguished by their Galileean accents were laying low, probably trying to figure out how to escape the city and Roman troops without notice.
But the women came to the tomb, as women have done for millennia; to grieve, and to once again, minister to their loved one, to prepare his body for burial. It was probably a mourning ritual they had done before for other loved ones, but likely none was done with the grief and despair that accompanied them this morning.
And then, an empty tomb, a man clothed in white telling them that Jesus had been raised from the dead, that they were tell the others and go meet him in Galilee.
Why wouldn’t they be afraid? The tomb had been robbed of their loved one’s body; they received a strange, incomprehensible message, they were to take the risky journey out of their hiding place in the city and go back to Galilee.
Mark leaves us hanging with this grief and fear. He leaves us frustrated, unsatisfied. Why did he tell the story this way, why doesn’t he end it on a high note with all of the blockbuster special effects we’ve come to expect?
I’ll leave you to ponder that question, to go back and read through the gospel again, full of mystery and ambiguity, to wonder and imagine what he might want his readers to know about “The good news of Jesus Christ, son of God”—a gospel that begins with certainty and ends here, in fear, terror, amazement, silence.
We are like those women, peering into an empty tomb. We are looking back, in fear, despair, disappointment, and anger. More than a year of disrupted lives, suffering, isolation. Two Easters now observed, I won’t say “celebrated” with live-streamed worship. More than a year since many of you have tasted the body of Christ in the sacrament; a year away from friends, family, the body of Christ gathered in community.
Our yearnings are clear, we can feel them in the marrow of our bones. If not to go back to the way things were in 2019 but an intense desire to return to this place, to public worship, to singing, and fellowship.
You are peering into an empty church as those women peered into an empty tomb. The same message resounds: “He is not here, he is risen!”
We are being called not to return to the past, but to make our way into the future, to meet Christ, not at the empty tomb or in the empty church, but out there, in Galilee, in the streets and neighborhoods of our city, in the world. We are called to imagine a new church, a new community, inspired by the risen Christ helping to heal and rebuild our city and the lives of our neighbors.
We are called to meet the risen Christ who is going before us into the future. There we will see him, for he is risen. There we will encounter the risen Christ in the new life and new world that is emerging through his resurrection.
That Christ is risen gives us hope. That Christ is risen reminds us that the powers of evil, Satan and his forces, do not have the last word, will not vanquish. That Christ is risen shows us the possibility and reality of new life, of new creation, of God’s reign breaking into our lives and into our world, making all things new, remaking us, in God’s image.
That Christ is risen gives us strength and courage to imagine a new world emerging, new community where God’s justice reigns, where prisoners are released, the hungry fed, the naked clothed, where the barriers that divide us crumble.
That Christ is risen gives us hope and courage to build a new community, to rebuild our neighborhood justly and equitably. We see signs of that already in the recent announcement that the boys and girls club will be our neighbors on Capitol Square, a symbol that this neighborhood belongs to our whole city, not just the few.
May we have the courage and hope to heed the call to go out and meet the Risen Christ where he is; and in our encounters with him, may our hearts burn with love and hope as we are healed and as we work toward the healing of our city and world.
Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
5 Epiphany
February 7, 2021
One of the things I’ve struggled with most over the past ten months is the helplessness I often feel when pastoral concerns arise. I’m unable to visit people in their homes, or hospital beds, or hospice. Phone calls or emails are no substitutes for a face-to-face conversation, for being present with someone who is suffering or struggling, to offer prayers, words of consolation and comfort, or communion.
I’m not alone in this. It’s something clergy talk about when we gather but it’s a general problem as well. We have been cut off from each other and in spite of all of the ways that technology enables us to worship, to have fellowship, to continue to do our work, we miss the simple pleasures of being together with friends, family, coworkers, other members of the body of Christ. We feel the sense of that loss every day.
The little gospel story we heard today seems straightforward, perhaps even uninteresting but hearing it in our context brings out new themes that speak to our situation.
Recall that we are at the very beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. Earlier that day, he had visited the synagogue in Capernaum where he taught (with authority) subdued a man with an unclean spirit. Now he is going home with Peter, where they discover that Peter’s mother-in-law is ill with a fever.
In moving from the synagogue to a home, Jesus is not only going out for lunch after services. He is moving from the public, male-oriented space of the synagogue to the private space where women could act as agents. But in this case, Peter’s mother-in-law is incapacitated by illness and unable to fulfill her traditional and important role of offering hospitality. Jesus heals her and Mark says that she got up and served them.
That little detail might be something we overlook, or it might be something we notice and even offend us. Think about, one could interpret this story to mean that Jesus healed Peter’s mother-in-law so that she could get up and fix dinner for him and his disciples.
There’s more to it than that, of course. First off, the word used here for “served” is the Greek word diakosune—from which we derive our word “deacon.” Significantly, Mark uses it at the very end of the gospel to describe the women who watched from afar as he is crucified. There, Mark is contrasting the behavior of these female disciples with Jesus’ male disciples, all of whom abandoned him at the end and left him to die alone. For Mark these women are models of discipleship. It’s appropriate, then, that at the very beginning of the gospel, Mark shows a woman, Peter’s mother-in-law, modeling discipleship by serving Jesus.
That’s not the end of the story. As evening falls, ushering a new day and the end of the sabbath, the townspeople bring all of their sick and those possessed by demons to Jesus. Mark says that he healed many of them—not all. And then Mark tells us that Jesus went off to a deserted place to pray. When his disciples caught up with him, they told him that “everyone was looking for him” implying that he was wanted back in Capernaum, to continue his ministry of healing. But Jesus demurred. He told them his work was elsewhere, to proclaim the good news, heal the sick, and cast out demons in the towns and villages of Galilee.
Packed into these few verses are some important lessons for us. We see models of both ministry and discipleship. For Mark, one key theme discipleship and ministry is service—Jesus will later tell his disciples in 10:45 that he came not to be served but to serve (using the exact same Greek word here). While healing is central to Jesus’ ministry, it’s important to keep in mind that healing was not only about a physical illness. In the ancient world, illness affected the whole person, body and soul, and to be healed meant being healed spiritually, and restored to the community. Peter’s mother-in-law was isolated in her bed. When Jesus healed her, she was restored to her place in the community.
In addition, in Jesus’ actions we see an important reminder to us as well. In the first place, while all the sick and those possessed by demons were brought to him in Capernaum, Mark says he healed many, not all of them and that he left to go to a deserted place to pray. Even Jesus couldn’t solve all of the problems of the people and he needed to take a break, get away from it all, to pray and recharge.
I’ve been inspired as I’ve watched Grace members come together over the last months. In spite of the challenges facing us all, in spite of the many limitations on what we can do, we are still caring for each other, preparing meals, praying, reaching out to those in need. We are doing ministry in all kinds of ways, sharing God’s love with each other and with the larger community. The phone tree, the healing prayer team, pastoral care committee, the nourishing community group are all working hard to keep us connected and to respond to needs as they emerge.
But we should remember that even as we seek to do ministry, to follow Jesus’ example in serving others, healing and restoring them to community, we should not lose sight of our own needs and limitations, that we can’t do it all, and we can’t do it by ourselves. Our work needs to be centered in prayer and in our relationship with God. The prophet’s words should inspire us:
“but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.”
Advent 3
December 13, 2020
Advent Exile
December 7, 2014
We are now observing the Third Sunday of Advent. It is known as Gaudete Sunday, a Sunday of joy. In many churches, the purple or blue vestments that are used throughout Advent give way to rose or pink vestments. And the dominant themes of the season—repentance in preparation for the coming of Christ at Christmas and at the second Coming, give way to rejoicing. We don’t make the change in liturgical colors, but as you can see, our advent wreath includes a rose-colored candle to represent this Third Sunday.
This theme of joy comes out especially in the first reading and the psalm today. Both texts speak to our own situation as well, because as you probably know the first doses of a covid vaccine are being shipped today, signifying that our struggle with the pandemic may be coming to an end. At the same time, experts warn that there are dark, difficult times ahead.
Both of those texts, Psalm 126 and Isaiah 61 reflect the experience of God’s people in exile in Babylon. The Psalm speaks of God restoring the fortunes of Zion, of people who left weeping, return in joy. The prophet speaks of God providing for those in Zion, replacing their mourning with a garland. He speaks also of building up the ancient ruins and repairing the ruined cities.
Exile is an image that may resonate powerfully in this season. Forced from our churches, our downtown nearly abandoned, having to give up many of our cherished activities and familiar routines, we are in exile physically, but also spiritually and psychologically. We feel profoundly dislocated from our community, our friends and family, even perhaps, from ourselves. We are disoriented, longing for return. And now, we may be able to see an end to all of this. Our hope is rekindled even as the number of those suffering and dying continues to rise.
Advent speaks to that longing, of hope in the midst of difficult times. As the year comes to a close, the days shorten and grow cold, the candles we light each week seem to be an act of defiance, a statement of faith that the light coming into the world, shining in the darkness, will overcome the forces of evil. It is a hope expressed in our faith that the one coming into the world, the Word made flesh is at work making all things new, even when chaos and evil seem to be overwhelming everything.
Our faith this season, our waiting, our hope, is not passive. It must participate in the work that God in Christ is doing here among us. That’s the message of the prophet, who proclaims those powerful, familiar words, echoed by Jesus himself in his first public sermon in the Gospel of Luke:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me
because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners;
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,
This is the work that God in Christ is accomplishing, the work that we ourselves are called to. And in this season of struggle, of waiting and hope, it is work that we may want to defer or ignore because of all that is going on around us and in our personal lives.
We have, I think, been tempted to focus on ourselves, on our fears and on all that we have lost—and we must, as we say that, recognize that many of us have lost a great deal indeed, loved ones, jobs and livelihoods, our hopes for the future, a sense of security. As we have seen in the runup to the election, and now in the weeks since, the anger and fear, the emotions surrounding all of that loss have driven deep in our individual and national psyches, heightened division, led to violence.
But even as we have tended to focus on ourselves, it is important to pay attention to the words of scripture this week, to the prophet’s call for justice, to bind up the broken-hearted, liberty to the captives, to rebuild the city. He was talking about Jerusalem, of course, the desolate city that the returning exiles would encounter. But our city is not so very different, with its deep inequities and injustice, with its boarded up windows and abandoned restaurants and retail establishments. As we return in the coming months, to the downtown and to our church, we must not lose sight of the work we need to do to advocate and struggle for a more just and equitable downtown, where all are welcome and may flourish.
As we think about our return, we would do well to heed the example set by John the Baptist in today’s gospel reading. When asked if he was the Messiah, he repeatedly denied it, and directed attention away from himself toward the one who was coming into the world, Jesus Christ. John was a witness; his proclamation, his testimony was not about himself but about Christ. His repeated denials, his pointing away from himself to another, is a powerful witness to us in our age.
Among everything else we see in our culture today, in our highly individualistic, perhaps even narcissistic culture, is an emphasis on the individual, on the individual’s rights. We are bombarded with images from politics, from culture, from social media of people who go out of their way to bring attention to themselves, make everything about them. What, after all, is a “social influencer” if not someone who is marketing themselves? In our response the pandemic, in the debates and conflicts over masks, or public gatherings, even worship, the rights of the few are often privileged over the needs of the many.
But John shows us a different way. His popularity, his notoriety, brought him attention, brought the religious elite to him to question him. And when questioned, he bore witness, not to himself, but to Jesus.
Even when we want to do the work to which God calls us, advocating for justice, feeding the hungry, binding up the broken-hearted, we may often do it for reasons that are as much about ourselves as they are about the needs of others or following the teachings of Jesus.
But John shows us a different way. It’s not about us. It’s about Jesus. In our work for justice, in our efforts to help our fellow human beings, our priority must always be to point the way to Jesus. As we look ahead to our return to the city, as we look ahead to Christ’s coming, may our longing, our waiting, our searching point us to Christ, and help us point others to him as well.
Advent 1
November 29, 2020
Here we are, beginning the season of Advent, observing it in ways none of us has ever done before, looking ahead to a Christmas season that will be equally unsettling in the compromises we will have to make because of the pandemic’s continued presence among us. Our joy and excitement are tempered by fear, exhaustion, and the ongoing sense of isolation—from our church, our friends and loved ones, from the rituals that have offered us such great comfort and to which we look forward each year at this time.
It’s enough to make us want to cry with the prophet, “Oh, that you would tear open the heavens and make the mountains shake!” We want deliverance from all of this; we look for solutions—vaccines, political leadership, magic bullets, that will remove all of our hardship and anxiety, and return things to normal.
In our present circumstances, the themes of Advent, as expressed in today’s gospel reading may provide less comfort and consolation, than increase our anxiety and exhaustion. In our struggles, it might be helpful to remind ourselves of the situations in which the gospels were written; in this case, Mark in particular.
The first Sunday in Advent is the beginning of the liturgical year, and the cycle of our readings switches. This year, we will be reading from the Gospel of Mark, which most scholars agree was the first of the gospels to be written. And it was written in difficult circumstances indeed. Around the year 70, so about 40 years after Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. The gospel reflects the challenges those 40 years presented. During his public ministry, Jesus repeatedly announced the coming of God’s reign, and proclaimed that he would soon return in majesty to usher in that reign of justice and peace. But 40 years had passed and Jesus’ followers saw no signs of that coming. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, this delay constituted something of a crisis of faith for the early Christian community.
Another factor was emerging as the gospel was written. In 66 ce, Jewish revolutionaries had taken up arms against the Roman occupation. Early successes had led to Rome’s vicious crackdown. We don’t know whether Mark was written immediately before, or in the immediate aftermath of Rome’s re-conquest of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Jewish temple, but we know that this turn of events created crisis both for the emergent Christian community and for Judaism.
The destruction of the temple was catastrophic for Judaism of the day. I used to say to my students that we couldn’t imagine what it meant emotionally, psychologically, and religiously to the Jews of the day. But now, I think we may have some sense of the significance of that cataclysmic event. Having been prevented from public worship, from gathering in this familiar place regularly, we have been forced to reimagine, reinvent our worship and our common life. And we have had to do that in the midst of our frustration and anger that we are not able to gather, that the old rituals and spaces are unavailable. We have spent a great deal of our time and energy in lament, mourning, and anger; looking back to the past, rather than forward into the uncertain future.
It’s in this context, to this moment, that Mark is writing his gospel. In this context, in this moment, we are beginning once again to observe Advent. Mark speaks to us, now, in our context, in this moment. We may be looking back to the past, to Advents and Christmases of years past, wishing we could easily recreate them without worry or concern for our safety. We might even, as so many are doing, observe them this year as we have in the past, throwing caution to the wind and endangering ourselves, our loved ones, our community. Our we might put everything on hiatus, put our lives and our celebrations on hold for a safer time. We can see all of those responses hinted at in the gospel reading.
But there’s something else.
At the very end of our gospel reading we hear the following:
Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, (Mk13:35)
Those time references, evening, midnight, cockcrow, or dawn, will appear again, in the next two chapters of Mark, which contain the story of Jesus’ arrest, trial, and crucifixion. I don’t think that’s an accident. I think Mark intends to make the connection, for there elements here in chapter 13 that reappear in the passion narrative, the darkening of the sun, for example.
What’s going on? Well, to begin with, the Greek word that is usually translated or interpreted to mean the Second Coming is “parousia” which literally means “presence.” What Mark is doing is trying to reorient our perspective away from a focus on the future, second coming. He wants to draw our attention to all the ways that the world has already changed by the coming of Jesus; all the ways the world has changed by Christ’s death and resurrection. And of course, because of the resurrection Jesus Christ is present among us now—the Parousia has already occurred.
But what might all of that mean for us, this Advent? We are inclined to think of this season as a time of preparation for Christmas. Often that means little more than a liturgical imitation of what we’re doing in real life, decorating our homes, buying presents, making holiday plans.
But I think there’s something else. While Mark has Jesus say “They will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds and with great glory” Mark has something else in mind. For Mark, the most important, clearest evidence that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God came in his crucifixion. That was the first time a human being confessed Jesus to be the Son of God.
For Mark we see Jesus’ identity, his divinity, not in his power but in his weakness, in his willingness to be crucified.
We live in a difficult time, where it very much does seem as if things are going from bad to worse, and we can’t see how bad they will get. We live in a time when the loudest voices in Christianity proclaim a message that has almost nothing to do with the Jesus of the gospels; it’s a Christianity connected with political power and nationalism, not with weakness and humility. We live in a time when many of our fellow Christians, many of our denominational institutions are more concerned about individual rights than the wellbeing of the wider community, the flourishing of all people. And in their demand for rights and power, they cause suffering and pain, they threaten the lives and health of the weakest and most vulnerable among us.
Looking for signs of Christ’s presence in these days is difficult, because of the noise, the anger, the hate.
But Advent reminds us that Christ came into a world of violence, he came preaching a message of peace, he came not to the center of power and wealth. His presence was not announced by the media or accompanied with the trappings of royalty. Remembering that Jesus died on the cross teaches us to seek his presence in the midst of suffering, weakness, and vulnerability.
For us in this season, let us not look back, nor look forward. Let us look around, keep watch, and remain alert for the presence of Christ among us, even when we are most fearful and full of despair. Let us look for signs of Christ’s presence. Let us be signs of hope and light to others in these dark days. May we share the good news of Christ’s coming, of his presence, and may we help others recognize and know his presence in the midst of their anxiety, fear, and longing.
In her recent book, Jesus and John Wayne, Kristine Kobes Du Mez writes about the transformation of American Christianity in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, as it became indistinguishable from conservative white, masculine, nationalistic politics. While her focus is on evangelicalism, the story affects of all of American Christianity, in that the consumer culture we inhabit shapes us indelibly. She uses the actor John Wayne as a symbol of that transformation, showing how American evangelical Christians reimagined Jesus in light of Wayne’s iconic portrayal of the lone American fighting against evil in defense of the American way of life.
Such imagery may be profoundly alien to us. When was the last time you watched Wayne’s iconic Green Berets—his full-throttled defense of US involvement in Viet Nam? Perhaps you have seen The Searchers or The Sands of Iwo Jima. But for most of us, John Wayne and the characters he played in the movies are faded relics of a long-forgotten past. Still, Kobes De Mez reveals that the images continue to shape our worldview and Christianity and those of other Americans in profound and disturbing ways. His elevation of the lone individual fighting for truth and the American way, battling enemies who were usually not white; the emphasis on redemptive violence, the praise of dominant masculinity against passive femininity, all of these themes continue to resonate in our culture and in American Christianity.
The conflation of Jesus and John Wayne may seem an absurdity, laughable, idolatry. It may seem a distortion, even a heretical misinterpretation of the one who died on the cross, offering love to the world, preaching on behalf of the poor, the powerless, the hungry. But there is imagery in our scripture, liturgy, and theology that evokes themes of imperial power.
Which brings us to today, the observance of Christ the King or the Reign of Christ. When we hear those words, it’s hard not to conjure up images of Jesus reigning in majesty, his head adorned with a crown, wearing imperial purple. All of those symbols are derived from the imperial imagery of the Roman Empire and medieval kingship. And while we may imagine a pax Christiana, or a pax Romana, in which the empire rules benevolently, peacefully, over a harmonious world, such tranquility always requires vigilant borders, suppression of dissent, overwhelming military power.
This commemoration of Christ the King, or of the Reign of Christ, as it’s often called these days, is a product of the political conflicts of the last century. It was proclaimed by the pope in 1925, a few years after the devastation of World War I, and in the face of the rising tide of Fascism in western Europe. It was an attempt to remind Christians to put our trust not in the kings or presidents, the forces of nationalism or the powers of this earth, but in the one who reigns in majesty in heaven.
Observing this theme today in the midst of our own political and constitutional crisis, with the threat of authoritarianism and the subversion of the democratic process, seems especially appropriate. And the gospel reading cuts to the very heart of our experience right now.
With today’s reading, we are at the end of our reading of Matthew’s gospel. It is also the final public teaching of Jesus in the gospel. The rest of the gospel is taken up with the events of the last supper, the crucifixion, and resurrection. In some ways, it resembles the parables we’ve been hearing the past few weeks; there’s judgment, there’s separation of good and evil, there’s condemnation. But the similarities end there. While it’s often referred to as a parable, it’s not. It’s more a description of the last judgment than a parable.
The ubiquity of the themes from this story in contemporary progressive Christianity are unfortunate, because it is usually reduced to a set of ethical imperatives—to care for the least of these, the poor, the hungry, the naked, prisoners. What’s overlooked in that perspective is that such actions are not humanitarian; they are sacramental. They take place in response to, and in the presence of Christ. But they are sacramental in a very interesting way, because they are unconsciously sacramental. That is to say, those performing the sacramental acts of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the prisoner, do not know they are performing sacramental acts, they are performing those acts out of mercy and love, to Christ and to their fellow humans, not knowing that as they perform them, Christ is present.
To bring it back to the day’s theme, reading this text in the context of the Reign of Christ is a powerful witness to the sort of king Christ is, to the nature of the reign of Christ. It is the very subversion of human notions of kingship and power. It is unspoken, unseen, unrecognized. It is present in the weakest and most vulnerable people in our society, in prisons and nursing homes where COVID is raging uncontrollably, on streets where the homeless sleep, in the lines that appear when our food pantry is open. It is present on our borders, in refugee camps, and facilities where immigrants are being held, in the cages where children live.
Think for a moment about all of those places—places we don’t want to think about, or see, or visit. Think about how most of those places, especially prisons and nursing homes, are occupied by people we don’t want to see or know.
There, among the most vulnerable, the weakest, the ignored, there Christ reigns. There, Christ is. And we are called, not only to reach out, to offer food, clothing, and shelter, to be present there. We are called to see Christ there, to recognize his presence, to serve him there. It is our calling to remind our culture of who Christ is, where Christ is, even when the culture wants to see Christ very differently, as a white, violent, powerful warrior hero.
In these dark days, in the midst of our fear and anxiety, as we struggle to make sense of what’s happening, to hold out hope for the future, following Jesus means to follow him there, where he reigns, and where he is present, in prisons, in nursing homes. And even when it is impossible to do so, as it is now, in these circumstances, it is our calling to bear witness to Christ’s presence in those places, among the victims of violence and oppression, the poor, the hungry, and the naked. We are called to challenge the powers of this world who ignore and prolong the suffering of the least of these. We are called to show even to them, the powerful, the wealthy, the uncaring, to make known to them Christ’s presence where they would least expect it and least recognize it. May we have the courage to witness and to show mercy.
On November 8, 2016 I was beginning a retreat at the Monastery of the Society of St. John the Divine in Cambridge, MA. When I scheduled it, I had no idea that it was Election Day but it turned out that I would rather have been nowhere else as the results came in and the election of Donald Trump as President became clear. I wrote about those days in a blog post:
Prayer continues to sustain me. We began saying Morning Prayer regularly via zoom and facebook at the beginning of the pandemic. While the Daily Office is something that I as a priest am familiar with and even expected to pray daily, I have found new strength and sustenance in it over the last seven months. Saying it with others enhances its meaning.
… I found hope and inspiration in those stone walls, in the chanting of the Daily Office, in the community created in silence and in the brothers’ hospitality. The silence of last week gave me space to pray and to think. As the week went on, the importance of prayer, the centrality of prayer, became more obvious. To reach not for my own words but for the church’s words; to say and chant psalms that were written 2500 years ago; for the doubts and fears, the faith and trust of an author so unlike myself, who lived in a world imaginably different from, for his words to speak for and to me, to speak of and to God; was comfort and consolation in this difficult and anxious. To rediscover the power of prayer, and especially of a community at prayer, was just what I needed. …
These last days before the election are an especially anxious time. Wherever we find ourselves on the political spectrum, most of us sense the importance of this election. We are afraid. We are afraid for the future of the nation and the world. The pandemic is growing; we fear for our jobs, our families and futures. Some of us are afraid that what we take to be fundamental rights will be stripped from us. Some may fear that their marriages will be declared null and void. In the midst of all the fear and anxiety, we lose sleep, lash out in anger, and find ourselves unable to focus. The relationships that should sustain us at times like these, our families and friends, our fellow members of the body of Christ, are strained by isolation and the inadequacy of virtual gatherings and conversations in establishing deep connection.
If there were no pandemic, I would make sure the church was open throughout the day on Tuesday and Wednesday for people to come into that familiar and beautiful space, to experience the beauty of holiness, and to pray. Instead, we will offer Morning Prayer at 9:00 am both days as we have done throughout the pandemic. We will also offer Noonday Prayer both days at 12 noon, and Compline at 9:00 pm on Tuesday. I invite you to join us via zoom or facebook for any or all of these opportunities.
Other opportunities for prayer include the prayer service livestreamed from the National Cathedral at 2 pm (CDT): Holding on to Hope.
In addition, there are a number of appropriate prayers offered by the Episcopal Church or in the Book of Common Prayer:
A Collect for Elections (from the Episcopal Office of Government Affairs)
Almighty God, you have promised to hear what we ask in the name of your Son. Watch over our country now and in the days ahead, guide our leaders and all who will vote, guide them in all knowledge and truth and make your ways known among all people. In the passion of debate give them a quiet spirit; in the complexities of the issues give them courageous hearts. Accept and fulfill our petitions, we pray, not as we ask in our ignorance, nor as we deserve in our sinfulness, but as you know and love us in your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Collect For the Nation (BCP pg. 207)
Lord God Almighty, who has made all the peoples of the earth for your glory, to serve you in freedom and in peace: Give to the people of our country a zeal for justice and the strength of forbearance, that we may use our liberty in accordance with your gracious will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Collect for Social Justice (BCP pg. 823)
Grant, O God, that your holy and life-giving Spirit may so move every human heart [and especially the hearts of the people of this land], that barriers which divide us may crumble, suspicions disappear, and hatreds cease; that our divisions being healed, we may live in justice and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Collect For an Election (BCP pg. 822)
Almighty God, to whom we must account for all our powers and privileges: Guide the people of the United States (or of this community) in the election of officials and representatives; that, by faithful administration and wise laws, the rights of all may be protected and our nation be enabled to fulfill your purposes; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
My series of video introductions to the Eucharist continue with episodes 4 and 5, focused on the sixteenth century:
Introduction to the Eucharist 4: The Protestant Reformation:
Introduction to the Eucharist 5: Thomas Cranmer and the English Reformation
I was struck yesterday morning while sitting on my porch with just a touch of Fall in the air, that in normal years, this would have been the first weekend of college football. Nothing is quite the same, is it.
Some other impressions from the week:
The horrific shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, shot seven times in the back, paralyzed, lying in his hospital bed, handcuffed.
The 17-year old boy strutting down the street after gunning down protestors, unchallenged by police.
A politician’s speech, quoting the letter to the Hebrews and the Apostle Paul, replacing references to Jesus Christ with Old Glory, the American flag.
The sordid end of a prominent Evangelical’s university presidency.
And finally, on Friday, an article in the New York Times about alumni from Harvard Divinity School, my alma mater, who are marketing themselves as Divinity or Spiritual consultants in the corporate world. Perhaps you can imagine the outrage on social media.
What, if anything do these images have in common? Perhaps nothing at all, but perhaps they are evidence of the extent to which we as Americans, as Christians have lost our way.
It’s appropriate, I think that just now in our lectionary cycle we are at that pivotal point in the story of Jesus. Last week, the great confession of Peter in the shadow of empire and of Hellenistic religion: “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”
And just after that, Jesus begins to lay out just what it means that he is the anointed one, the Christ, the Son of God. To be the Messiah means that he will go to Jerusalem, be arrested, executed for the crimes of insurrection and revolution, and on the third day, be raised from the dead.
And Peter’s response? “This must never happen to you!”
This is one of those key moments in the gospels, crucial to understanding Jesus but crucial also to understanding the gospel writers portray him, his mission, and the disciples’ response to him.
Matthew is following Mark’s chronology closely here. There are a series of three exchanges between Jesus and his disciples, three times that Jesus makes a prediction that he is going to Jerusalem, that he will be crucified, and raised from the dead. Each of those three predictions is followed by an incident, like this one with Peter, that makes clear the disciples don’t understand what Jesus is talking about, that their ideas about him, and what will happen in Jerusalem are radically different. In response to their objections, Jesus then explains to them what it really means to follow him: ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”
Two observations. First, when Jesus tells Peter to get behind him, he’s telling him to follow him, disciples are to follow behind their teachers. Yes, it’s a rebuke but it’s also a reminder to Peter where he belongs. To draw on imagery in the gospel itself, while earlier, after Peter’s great confession, Jesus had called him the rock on which he would build the church, now Peter has become a stumbling block.
Second, when we hear language of taking up one’s cross, or bearing a cross, it’s likely we think about burdens of one sort or another, personal struggles with which we have to deal. In the Roman world, “taking up one’s cross” meant only one thing. You were on your way to your place of execution.
In many ways our own reaction to Jesus’ words are much like Peter’s. We don’t want them to mean what they say literally, that following Jesus, becoming his disciples, means suffering and pain. We come to Jesus to find healing, to take away our suffering. And we think that on the cross, Jesus made everything Ok. But it’s not that simple. The gospels make clear that Jesus went to Jerusalem to confront the religious and imperial establishment, to initiate God’s reign, to transform the world. It’s also clear that he knew what would happen—that in Jerusalem, he would be arrested and executed, that he would die, as so many others did before and after him, crushed by the weight of imperial oppression. But he also knew that wouldn’t be the end.
His predictions of his coming crucifixion didn’t end with his death, for his death opened up the way to new life, his resurrection and the coming of God’s reign of justice and peace.
As we consider getting behind and following Jesus, we may wonder about the road ahead, we may wonder about the world around us. We see the deaths, again and again, of African Americans to police violence and to white supremacy, we see the suffering caused by COVID and the half-hearted response to it. We see the ravages of hurricanes and wildfires, intensified by climate change caused by our own greed. We see the drumbeat of hatred all around us, and a Christianity that either cozies up to power or seems ineffective to offer an alternative. We may want to escape into a spiritualism that denies any connection between our faith and the injustices and evils of this world.
But the journey on which Jesus is traveling is not a journey into escapism, fear or despair. It is a journey into the heart of the world as it is, with all of its struggles, suffering, and injustice. The journey ends, not at the foot of the cross but at the emptyw tomb, where we experience the joy of resurrection, and the possibility of a world made new by the transforming power of God’s justice and love.
Preaching Grace on the Square 