Author: Rosemary Lovelace

An Easter Story – George Yandell

In memory of Debbie Micklus

Billy and his mother moved into a sixth-floor apartment. It was one of those massive gray New York City buildings. It dwarfed all other apartment buildings Billy had seen before. When moving in, Billy’s mom’s friends helped carry their odds and ends up the six flights of stairs—Billy stood at the top of the stairs and watched—his mattress, his toy chest, now filled with comic books. 

Behind him Bill heard a door open; turning, he saw an old gray-haired man look gloomily out at him and the moving procession. He croaked to Billy, “You my new neighbor?” “Yup,” said Billy. Then Billy asked, “What’s wrong with you?” The wizened old man stared, then barked out, “I’m old and alone and I drink too much. What’s wrong with you?’ the old man asked.

“I’m young and moving and I’ve got cystic fibrosis. I’m eleven. My name’s Billy,” he responded, offering his small hand to the old man. The old man replied, “My name’s Bill, same as yours. How long you had cystic fibrosis,” his voice softening.

Billy replied, “All my life. How long you been drinking too much?”

Old Bill laughed and said, “Seems like a long time.”

Then Billy’s mother staggered up the stairs. Billy introduced her to Old Bill. “Mom, I want you to meet my new friend. His name’s Bill too. He’s old and he drinks too much.” 

Billy’s mother blanched, put down her load and said, “I’m sorry, Mr… Mr..”  “Bill,” the old man replied, “What you sorry for?” Billy’s mother gave Bill and Billy each a glance, smiled, and said, “I guess I’m not sorry at all—Glad to meet you, Bill. I’m Sarah.”

Sarah and her husband had just divorced, and she and Billy had lived with friends until she could get the money for their own place. It was a Saturday when they moved in, and she started to work on Monday. She hailed a cab, rode Billy to his school, and then rode on to work. She had arranged for Billy to go with one of the teachers to an after-school program, where Sarah picked Billy up at 5:30 each evening. The routine began to settle in—up at 5:00, beat on Billy’s back for an hour to dislodge the accumulated mucous—then carefully prepare a special breakfast, then off to work and school—Home at night and after another back-beating session, Billy using his inhaler, dinner, homework, T.V. and sleep. Sarah and Billy grew happy in their new home. Old Bill came over for dinner once a week. Almost every afternoon after school, Billy would go and talk with Old Bill. They became fast friends. One day Old Bill asked Billy, “Billy, you’re a pretty sick boy. How come you’re happy all the time?”

Billy said, “Well, I’m not happy all the time. Sometimes my back hurts so much, I think I’d rather die than go through treatment… but then, I like the days. I like the city. School is fun, and I’m a lot better off than most of the sick kids I see at the clinic. Some of them are paralyzed and some have brain injuries. I’m lucky, I guess. Mom loves me, and I like living here. Bill, how come you’re sad most of the time?” Billy asked hesitantly.

“Well,” said Bill, “I’ve done most of what I set out to do and found it wasn’t so important. My wife died 14 years ago, my friends are mostly dead, and those that aren’t dead are boring. I drink to add some color to my life—but all it does is deaden the pain.”

Billy piped up, “Mom and I go to Church every week. She sings in the choir, and I listen and watch and pray. Just a month ago, they asked me to join the acolytes- it’s OK if some Sundays I’m too sick. You know what? Jesus came to heal people like you and me. But sometimes healing isn’t to our bodies so much— Healing is for our friendship with God.”

Old Bill started and pressed Billy, “What do you mean our friendship with God?”

“Bill, it’s not what we do that heals us so much as what we allow God to do. Mom cries sometimes because she knows I hurt, and she knows I’m going to die. I figure God felt the same way about Jesus on the cross. Jesus’ father probably cried in heaven. But God and Jesus both knew something. Their love for each other could squish death for good, like a penny on the subway tracks. So Jesus loved all those people who hurt him, and followed God’s lead- and God healed him through dying. Jesus was healed into resurrection.”

Old Bill’s eyes glistened. He sat there, looking at Billy; skinny, pale Billy, wheezing out the words. Sarah came to the door, and Billy left old Bill sitting there; and Old Bill cried quietly by himself, looking out over the Good Friday evening, the city lights shining in the New York spring night.

As the weeks and months went on, Billy was sometimes too sick to go to school. Sarah had to work to be able to pay their bills, and a nurse was out of the question. One day Old Bill offered to stay with Billy. Sarah was almost late for work. She was torn but accepted Bill’s offer, rushing out.

Every sick day after that, Old Bill stayed in with Billy. He quit drinking, for fear he’d miss something Billy needed. He enjoyed sitting with Billy. He often thought of Billy’s words, “We have to allow God to heal us.”

Billy died just after his fifteenth birthday. Sarah and Old Bill cried at the grave, and they took the cab home together. Sarah looked at Old Bill at the top of the stairs and said, “Bill, I need a drink.”

Old Bill said, “I’ll make one for you.” They sat down, Bill with coffee, Sarah with gin. “You’re not drinking?” she asked.

“Billy helped me, Sarah. He helped me to quit deadening my pain and sadness. He once told me, ‘Bill, we have to allow God to heal us.’ He said Jesus had to trust God completely, even though it led to his death. And that God healed Jesus through dying and being raised up. Sarah, I think Billy was right.” Sarah said, eyes welling up with tears “Bill, what are we going to do without him?” Old Bill said, “Sarah, we’re going to make it through together. I’m going to cry and laugh with you at all our memories of Billy, and I’m going to live fully until I’m completely healed like Billy taught me.”

Good Friday – George Yandell

I want to talk of grief. The words grief and grieve from the Latin gravare = to burden, from gravis = heavy. As they pass through Old French, grief and grieve pick up the sense of ‘to harm’. Our word grieve means ‘to cause to be sorrowful; distress’. Grief means ‘deep mental anguish, as that arising from bereavement’.

Our understanding of grief and grieving has undergone remarkable changes in my lifetime. In the early 1970’s Elizabeth Kubler-Ross identified 5 distinct stages of grief. We now have come to understand that grieving is not predictable, but is personal – everyone grieves differently. Approaching death is not a cookie-cutter experience. As we hear Jesus with his friends throughout the gospels, he frequently speaks to them of his coming death and theirs as well. These are instances of preparatory grieving – of anticipatory grief. 

Listen to these moments when Jesus speaks of his impending death: 

In the very center of Mark’s gospel Jesus says to his disciples: “Who do you say that I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.” Jesus immediately began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after 3 days rise again.” Listen to how Peter responds – “Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him,” to deny that Jesus could die that way.  Peter was attempting to bargain Jesus out of his destiny.

In Luke (17:22 ff) Jesus tells it this way, “The days are coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it…For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky, so will the Son of Man be in his day. But first he must endure much suffering and be rejected by this generation.” (18:31 ff) “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man…will be accomplished. 

For he will be handed over to the Gentiles; and he will be mocked and insulted and spat upon. After they have flogged him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise again.” Luke concludes with this statement: “But they understood nothing about all these things- it was hidden from them.” Disbelief, denial. Their hearts couldn’t entertain that Jesus could die, even though he said clearly he would rise again.

Our experiences of death range from tragic slams of anger, to denial, to bargaining, depression, and maybe to eventual acceptance. But no one else grieves like I grieve.  So it was with Jesus’ closest companions. They all responded to death in different ways. 

How many times did Jesus and his friends walk out of Jerusalem to the west?  How many times did they pass under the rotting corpses of fellow Jews who had been crucified by the Roman Empire? What did it do to them? Did it stiffen their resistance against the empire? Did it put the fear of the false god-emperor into them?

Some scholars have found two parallel crucifixion stories in Mark’s gospel, which holds the earliest of the crucifixion accounts. The second account reads like this: “And it was the third hour when they crucified him. And the inscription of the charge against him read, ‘The King of the Jews.’ Those who passed by reviled him. Those who were crucified with him also reviled him. And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice and breathed his last. And the veil of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.”

You can hear Mark’s account inside the passion story from John we just read. John certainly had Mark’s story in mind when he recorded his account. “This narrative interprets Jesus’ death not as that of an innocent, righteous suffering servant of God, but as an agonizing conflict between the powers of light and the powers of darkness. This is [an end-of-the-age] interpretation. When Jesus had received the sour wine and drank it, he said “It is finished.”   “Jesus did not count equality with God as something to be grasped or held onto, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.” “Jesus is the divine redeemer who completely emptied himself of his divine glory”. [The above two paragraphs adapted from Preaching the New Lectionary, Reginald Fuller, 1974, p. 352]

John Dominic Crossan has often said, “Jesus would be executed by the powers of the world’s dark empires in every age, including our own.” This is the nature of the conflict between the vision of God’s peace and justice Jesus lived for, and the vision of power-seeking through violence.  

After his mock trial Pilate ordered Jesus be flogged or scourged. Scourging was standard pre-crucifixion procedure. It was done with a whip made of several leather straps to which sharp abrasive items like nails, glass or rocks were attached. Scourging resulted in severe lacerations of the skin and damage to the flesh beneath. [From The New Interpreters’ Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. 5, 2009, pp. 135-6]

The flogging itself sometimes killed convicted men. With the strips of skin handing loose and blood pouring down, Jesus was faint with desperate pain. It was no wonder in Luke that the guards seized Simon of Cyrene to carry the cross-piece to which Jesus’ wrists would be nailed. Yet Jesus identifies with the crowd following him and Simon — through his pain he hears their grief and sorrow and tells the crowd, “Do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. The days are surely coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren and the wombs that never bore… They will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us,’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’ His empathy for those he left behind penetrated through his suffering.  “In Mark first, but echoed almost verbatim in Matthew and Luke, we learn that when Jesus was seized by the crowd of guards “all,” please note not some, but “all” of his disciples forsook him and fled. No disciple is recorded as being present at the cross in the first three gospels written, because they were not there! 

Maundy Thursday – Katharine Armentrout

The Commandment to Love Like Jesus
This is the most powerful and solemn of all nights. It is the night before the crucifixion of Jesus, that darkest of days. And yet this is the night that Jesus, knowing he will be executed, focused not on himself and his coming death, but focused instead on his disciples whom he loved and, by extension, he focused on us.  

It is the night that he gave us the new commandment – the mandatum – the commandment that we are to love one another as He has loved us. We are, as Bishop Curry says, to love like Jesus. An almost impossible command to honor, but one that will define his disciples and should define us as his followers.     

And it is also the night that Jesus gave us the gift of the Eucharist, the gift of the living bread, the bread for our journey as his disciples, the bread of his presence that will help to sustain us as we try to live out the new commandment.  

It is a night when we talk and study about these events and when we celebrate the Eucharist, as he commanded, “in remembrance of him”. We will try to do this not with just a passive reading of the scriptures and rote action at the altar; we will try not to treat these events as just a memory, but through our prayers and our practice tonight, we will try to bring these events into the present, or, to use the Greek phrase – through anamnesis, to bring these events into our worship as though they are present, so that they can help form and shape us now as followers of our Lord.  

We last gathered on Sunday to enact the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem; that was the day when he was hailed as “Messiah” by many; by many who were waving their palm branches. For the next four days, Jesus had taught crowds in the Temple, and he walked among the throngs in that city. As this happened there was increasing tension among the high priests and religious leaders because they feared the presence of Jesus might lead to riots; perhaps leading to a crackdown by the Romans; they were looking for a way to silence Jesus. And Judas gave them that way- he betrayed Jesus to the leaders and promised to lead them to Jesus so that they could arrest and try him.  

So, as Jesus and the disciples gathered for the evening meal this night, as the gospel says: “Jesus knew that his hour had come”. He knew that he had been betrayed…Thus he also knew that he had run out of time, time to teach, to coach, to prepare his disciples for the ministry of love, of healing and run out of time to help them understand the new life offered by God in the coming kingdom. And so, instead of caring for himself, Jesus prepared his last lesson…  

He got up from the table, tied a towel around his waist and began to wash the feet of his disciples. There he is – the Messiah, the Son of God, on his hands and knees washing the filthy, dung-clogged, scabbed, feet of his disciples. Was he trying to teach by example how one becomes a true servant to those in God’s kingdom?  

When Jesus washed his disciples’ feet, was he performing as a servant for his disciples? Many households at that time had servants do the foot washing. It was necessary given the condition of the road and pathways of that time. So was Jesus enacting the ministry of a servant? Certainly many of us have heard the scripture this way and patterned our ministry on this understanding.  

But there is more to this I think. There is a deeper and even more powerful aspect to the foot-washing than just “service”. Service might be the outward and visible signs of Jesus’ actions in the foot washing but I believe that the inward and spiritual nature of that action is about love and relationships, not just about being a faithful servant.  

That night I think he was teaching us a ministry of love, of love, of relationship, of community, not just a ministry of service. Because, you see, while foot washing in Jesus’ time could be a job for a servant; it could also be done by the head of the household, the host, as a sign of his profound welcome, of his hospitality, of his love.   

That night Jesus, I believe, was acting as the host – inviting Peter, and all his beloved disciples, and us, into God’s home, offering a full relationship with God and himself. He was doing this because of the profound love he has for us and for all God’s people – the rich as well as the poor, the arrogant as well as the penitent; the unlovable as well as the lovable.

His desire, I believe, was for us all to be fully in a relationship, a mutual relationship of love and respect, with him and with God. Jesus is explicit about this. He says: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” This commandment is about letting ourselves receive the extravagant, life-giving love and hospitality Jesus offers us and then extending that same extravagant, life-giving love to others.  

This intimacy that Jesus asked of Peter and asks of us can be disquieting and often we feel that we need to hold on tight to our defenses. But when we do that, we erect a barrier between us and God; we remain guarded. We end up consigning ourselves to a relationship with our Lord that is more distant and more rule-oriented,  

And, in the context of our ministry, it leads to relationships that are marked by an unintended inequality – “I am the giver, you are the receiver.”  

But if we are able to fully embrace the love Jesus offers, if our ministry arises out of our full and loving relationship with Jesus, then, when we reach out in love and not just in service, the whole dynamic between us and those whom we help changes. We do not remain just a giver of services to those who are in need – Instead we see ourselves, and those we help, as equally beloved children of God, helping to create the new beloved Kingdom which Jesus ushers in.  

This, as we know, is not always easy and there is much hard work to be done to share that kind of love in God’s community, where the needs are so great. But Jesus did not leave the disciples, or us, without sustenance for our work. Because Jesus gave us the gift of the Eucharist that night. He gave us bread for our journey.  

Jesus knew that the disciples would need the assurance of His continued love, His guidance, and His presence with them, as they tried to continue the full, open loving kingdom work he had given them to do.  

And so he gathered his disciples around him ….in the Upper Room at the table. Taking a loaf of bread He said, “This is my body for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” And taking the cup of wine, He said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” This meal of his body and blood, of broken bread and wine, brings into the present, into our outstretched hands, Jesus’ life, his death and his continued loving presence in us who share in the meal.  

We meet Jesus in the broken bread and wine. Like the paschal lamb that is offered as a sacrifice at the Passover dinner, Jesus gave the disciples, and us, the gift of himself. A gift of enduring presence that comforts and sustains, that nourishes and enlivens us who take the bread and wine. The gift of his presence, helping us “to love like Jesus”.   

And so, tonight, renewed by his body and blood, secure in the knowledge of his presence with us, this night we can make our commitment to follow the new commandment – to love others as Jesus has loved us. 

Palm Sunday A – George Yandell

Every year the assigned readings for Palm Sunday split the day between the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem then move to the passion gospel and Jesus’s crucifixion. I’ve had problems with that program for a long time. So today we’re going to focus on Jesus entering Jerusalem and leave the crucifixion to Good Friday. 

Two processions entered Jerusalem on a spring day in 30 CE. It was the beginning of Passover week, the most sacred week of the Jewish year. One was a peasant procession, the other an imperial procession demonstrating the Roman Empire’s occupation and domination of Jerusalem and Israel. From the east, Jesus rode a donkey down the Mount of Olives cheered by his followers. Jesus was from the peasant village of Nazareth, his message was about the kingdom of God, and his followers came from the peasant class. My friend and colleague Bowlyne Fisher would have called them ‘the great unwashed.’ Jesus and his companions had journeyed from Galilee, 100 miles going south to Jerusalem. [The above adapted from The Last Week: A Day-by Day Account of Jesus’s Final Week in Jerusalem, Borg and Crossan, Harper San Francisco, 2006, p. 2]

Matthew’s story of Jesus and his kingdom of God movement has been aiming for Jerusalem. It has now arrived.

On the opposite side of the city, coming from the west, Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Idumea, Judea and Samaria, entered Jerusalem at the head of a column of imperial cavalry and soldiers. Jesus’ procession proclaimed the kingdom of God; Pilate’s proclaimed the power of empire. Those two processions embody the central conflict of the week that led to Jesus’ crucifixion. 

Pilate demonstrated Rome’s imperial power and its imperial theology. The emperor was divine. It was the standard practice of the Roman governors to be in Jerusalem for the major Jewish festivals. They were in the city in case there was trouble. They augmented the standing deployment of legion soldiers on the grounds of the temple. They had no regard for the Jews’ religious devotion. There often was trouble at Passover – that festival celebrated the Jewish people’s liberation from an earlier empire, that of Egypt.

Pilate’s procession had cavalry on horses, foot soldiers, leather armor, helmets, weapons, banners, golden eagles mounted on poles, sun glinting on metal and gold. The sounds of marching feet and hoofs, the creaking of leather and the beating of drums emphasized their dominance and power. The dust swirled around them. 

That procession displayed not only imperial power, but also Roman imperial theology. According to that theology, the emperor was not simply the ruler of Rome, but the Son of God. It began with the greatest of emperors, Caesar Augustus, who ruled Rome for 45 years, from 31 BCE to 14 CE. His father was the god Apollo, who conceived him in his mother, Atia. Inscriptions refer to him as ‘son of God’, ‘lord’ and ‘savior’. He has brought ‘peace on earth’ or the pax Romana. After his death he was seen ascending into heaven to reign with the other gods. For Rome’s Jewish subjects, Pilate’s procession embodied not only a rival social order but also a rival theology.

So to Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. Although it is familiar, it holds surprises. As Matthew tells the story it is a ‘counter-procession.’ Jesus planned it in advance. As Jesus approaches the city from the east he had told two disciples to go into the village nearing Jerusalem and get him the colt they would find, a young one never before ridden.  They do so, Jesus rides the colt down the Mount of Olives to the city surrounded by a crowd of enthusiastic followers. They spread their cloaks, spread leafy branches on the road and shout, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David. Hosanna in the highest heaven!” It is a planned political demonstration. [ibid]

Its meaning is clear. Using symbolism from the prophet Zechariah, it foretells that a king would be coming to Jerusalem ‘humble and riding on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’ In Mark’s gospel the reference to Zechariah is implied. Matthew’s gospel in telling the same story, makes the connection explicit: “Tell the daughter of Zion, look, your king is coming to you humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt the foal of a donkey.” Zechariah’s passage continues, “He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war-horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations.”

This king on a donkey will banish war from the land- no more chariots, war-horses or bows and arrows. Commanding peace to the nations, he will be a king of peace.

Jesus’ planned procession deliberately countered what was happening on the other side of the city. Pilate’s procession embodied the power, glory and violence of the empire that ruled the world. The forces of that empire had squelched Jewish peasant revolts in years prior, the last one in 5 BCE when Jesus was born. Jesus’ procession embodied an alternative vision, the kingdom of God. That contrast, between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Caesar is central to the gospel of Mark and to the story of Jesus and early Christianity. 

The confrontation between these two kingdoms continues through the last week of Jesus’ life. The Church also calls Holy Week, Passiontide. As we enter this week of passion and pathos, we do well to root ourselves in the audacity, the courage and the drive that led Jesus to create that counter-procession. He must have known his caricature of Pilate would not sit well. He egged on the legion with his deliberate pantomime of Pilate. And he sealed his own fate. To what purpose? To honor his father in heaven. To fulfill Zechariah’s prophecy. But mostly, to follow the lead of the Holy Spirit poured into him at his baptism, with the voice of heaven booming out, “This is my son, the beloved. Listen to him!” Pay attention, God declared, this is the One I’ve anointed finally to liberate my people from bondage and tyranny. And so the Holy Spirit’s lead continues today. Jesus has come to bring peace even now, to a world torn with hatred, strife and wars. The anointed one anoints us to proclaim the true kingdom of God today.

Jesus and Lazarus

Lent 5A – Byron Tindall

This event in the life of Jesus as reported by St. John is one of the better-known episodes of his life to Christians today. John must have thought it was very important as he devoted 45 verses to it. For example, in the next chapter of John, Jesus once again visits Mary, Martha and Lazarus. On this occasion, Mary anoints Jesus with a pound of costly perfume. John allots eight verses at the beginning of Chapter 12 to this episode.

It has long puzzled me as to why St. John is the only evangelist to record the raising of Lazarus from the dead. Luke does mention the relationship between Jesus and the siblings.

In Luke 10:38-41, we read, “Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.’ But the Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.’”

Granted, there is no mention of Lazarus, the brother, in this citation from Luke, but I firmly believe it is the same Mary and Martha.

There is not a single mention of this family group by Matthew or Mark.

Back to the Gospel According to St. John.

By this time, Jesus had already alienated the Jewish elite.

In John 10:22-31, we read, “At that time the festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, ‘How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.’ Jesus answered, ‘I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me; but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.’ The Jews took up stones again to stone him.”

Is it any wonder as to why the disciples were not gung-ho about returning to Judea much less Jerusalem?

As an aside, all the options for the Gospel lessons in the Burial Office are taken from the Gospel of John. One of the selections is a portion of the Gospel lesson for today.

Why Jesus waited four days to go to Bethany is puzzling to some. It was believed in that day that the soul hovered around the body for three days in case the individual was not actually dead. By the fourth day, if the person were dead, decomposition of the body would already have begun, thus Martha’s comment about the smell that would emanate from the tomb if the stone were removed.

We’re all familiar with the outcome of the event that is the Gospel lesson for today. I don’t want to spend time talking about that, but rather I want to backtrack for a moment to Ash Wednesday.

In the invitation at the beginning of the liturgy, the Celebrant or Minister appointed addresses the congregation saying, among other things, “I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word….”

The thing that really jumped out and grabbed me comes from near the end of the Gospel lesson taken from St. John for today.

The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’”

During this, the last part of Lent, what can we discover about ourselves that needs to be unbound so we can be let go?

Is it the pursuit of fame, fortune, power, acceptance? Is there a compulsion or obsession or addiction that has you wrapped up in its hold? Does pride, hatred, or prejudice prevent you from becoming what God intends you to be?

It most certainly isn’t a pleasant task to get out of our comfort zone and try to find the traits that have us bound up so that we can identify and then confront them, and with God’s help, overcome them.

Right about now, some of you may be thinking something along the lines of, “What about God’s unconditional love we keep hearing about from the pulpit?”

Yes, the concept of God’s unconditional love says that God loves each and every one of us totally and completely unconditionally even with all our warts and all the dirty laundry we all bring to the table. And that love extends not only to us humans, but also to the minutest part of God’s creation. But that love comes with responsibilities.

Once we accept that concept of God’s love for all of creation, we must be watchful for the things we do or don’t do that hinder the advancement of God’s kingdom.

As I’ve said before, our relationship to God is two dimensional. The vertical part is our direct contact or dealing with God through our worship, prayer, contemplation, etc. The horizontal portion is how we relate to or deal with the rest of God’s creation. If either the vertical or horizontal is fractured, our relationship with God is incomplete and needs to be repaired.

Taking a page from Godly Play, I wonder… I wonder what would happen if all the residents of Pickens County decided to abandon the individual pursuits of their goals and aspirations and decided to eradicate hunger in the county? I wonder what would happen if that movement spread across the world. Would there be no more people starving to death?

I wonder how it would be if the leaders of the world decided it was high time to respect the dignity of every human being. I wonder what it would be like if there were no more wars to decimate the youth of the world.

I wonder if the politicians and their followers will ever decide to sit down and talk with each other rather than throwing mud and accusing each other of trying to eliminate the other? Would we be a kinder nation?

Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’”

Lent 4A – George Yandell

One day some people observed a blind man sitting on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet and a sign that read “I am blind, please help.” A creative publicist was walking by him and stopped to observe that he had only a few coins in his hat. So he dropped a few more coins in the hat, and without asking for the blind man’s permission, took the sign, turned it over and wrote another message on it. Then he replaced the sign at the man’s feet and left.

That afternoon the creative publicist returned to check on the blind man and noticed that his hat was full of bills and coins. The blind man recognized his footsteps and asked if it was he who had rewritten his sign. He wanted to know what did he write on it? The publicist responded, “Nothing that was not true, I just phrased your message differently.” He smiled and went on his way. The blind man never knew, but his revised sign read “TODAY IS SPRING AND I CANNOT SEE IT.”

What do WE see in the story of the man born blind? The initial scene raises a perennial issue in the work of the Church—which is, do we see people as problems to be solved (or reflected on) – or as people in need of God’s love and our care? [Above story adapted from Synthesis for March 2014 by King Oehmig.]

John Dominic Crossan has said that many of the stories of Jesus in our gospels can be read as parables about Jesus// parables about Jesus. I understand today’s reading from John about Jesus and the blind man as a parable. Let me tell you what I mean. 

Matthew 13:34 records: “All this Jesus said to the crowd in parables; indeed he said nothing to them without a parable.” “The parables of Jesus are not literary productions. Each of them was uttered in an actual situation in the life of Jesus, at a particular and often unforeseen point- they are most often concerned with situations of conflict. They call for immediate response.” [J. Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, pp. 21. 131]

Hear again the initial question raised by the disciples: “Rabbi, was it this man’s wrongdoing or his parents’ wrongdoing that caused him to be born blind?” Their question is based on a common assumption in Judaism in Jesus’ day: all misfortune was deserved, since the calamity was the result of sin. If not the man’s, then it had to be his parents’ sins.

The man born blind: The great truth that begins as “blasphemy” in this story is that Jesus is the light of the world. The disorienting irony is that the seemingly holy Pharisees— the virtuous, the intellectual, the well-trained and much-respected ones— refuse to see the reality of God in Christ. Yet the once-blind beggar “born entirely in sins” (v. 34) never wavers in his belief. The willful blindness of those who should be able to see is contrasted with the willing faith of the blind man who now sees. [Above adapted from Synthesis for March 2014 by King Oehmig.]

John is obviously recounting an earlier story about Jesus healing a blind man with his spittle, told in Mark’s gospel. But it has a completely different context and meaning. If we understand the story of Jesus and the blind man as parable, what does that mean?

What if the blind man represents the members of the Jesus community John lived and worked in? They once saw themselves in the darkness of ‘not-seeing’ but were changed when the light of the world penetrated their darkness and changed them. Jesus increased the anxiety of those Jewish followers of Jesus, making them choose whether to live in the light or reject it. This story as parable tells of what the community of John endured when they discovered they could no longer live inside their traditional faith system.

The leaders of the synagogue where they worshipped on the Sabbath could no longer tolerate the followers of Jesus, so they ousted the entire community John was writing to. [That expulsion happened 58 years after Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection- it is clearly mentioned in the story.] I believe this parable about Jesus intends to describe the feelings of the excommunicated Jewish followers of Jesus by telling this story as if it happened in the life of “the man born blind.” [Above paragraph adapted from John Shelby Spong’s The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic, p. 144]

Please hear this: When the story tells of “the Jews” it is NOT an expression of anti-Semitism- Jesus was also a Jew, and so were his disciples. The situation John refers to does not set up “the Jews” as enemies of Jesus, but as synagogue authorities who defined the followers of Jesus as no longer Jews– the followers of Jesus even called themselves ‘the new Israel.’

In the new Israel, all limits were broadened and inclusion of many unacceptable to the synagogue were included. Jews who were able to see the meaning of Jesus were included in that new community- women were included, as well as despised Samaritans and Gentiles. [ibid, p. 144- 145] So what is the message for us as Church today? If we see people as problems to be solved (or reflected on) we’re like the Pharisees. But if view our neighbors as people in need of God’s love and our care, then our mission is to be lucifers- literally, ‘light-bringers’, to open the eyes as ours are being opened- to display the glory of God to those who live outside our traditional faith system. Episcopal worship and ways can be daunting to those not schooled in our traditions. If we invite people to the common meal, to hear the good news of Jesus, to learn the tried and true ways of living the love of Jesus, then Jesus for us and them is the light of the world. It is spring and we can all see it together.

Lent 3A – Bill Harkins

Good morning, and welcome to Holy Family on this third Sunday of Lent, a day on which we hear again the story of the Samaritan woman at the well. It is a risky encounter for both Jesus and the woman, as both willingly subject themselves to “exposure” of various kinds. This is a fascinating word, exposure, with subtle meanings, the etymology and synonyms of which are relevant to today’s Gospel text. We define exposure, for example, as the fact or condition of being presented to view or made known, or the condition of being unprotected, especially from severe weather. It isn’t necessarily pejorative, of course, as in being subjected to some beneficial influence. When our boys were growing up we sought to expose them to culture in the forms of art, and music, for example. As a professor I have endeavored to expose students—and myself—to new ideas and ways of thinking. But, we know all too well from the past several years that exposure to a virus or illness is not good, nor is the condition of being at risk of financial loss. Hikers, trail runners, anyone who spends time in the outdoors is vulnerable to exposure to weather, geography, and all that exposes us—both physically and psychologically—in those spaces. We seek to limit our exposure to market fluctuations, for example, and as a licensed clinician I take care to avoid exposure to ethical or legal liability. We may speak of an instance of exposing, as a verb, as we saw in the Gospel text for today, a disclosure of something secret or which has been revealed. Synonyms include liability, openness, and vulnerability. It is the last synonym, in particular, I want to highlight in the text for today.

Recently I was talking with a colleague about our shared grief over a series of professional losses, and my mind took me to the Waffle House on Charlotte Avenue in Nashville, where I had a final meal with a beloved professor from Vanderbilt who was dying of cancer. I had tried to convince him to pick a fancier lunch spot, but he loved the Waffle House because the food was compatible with his chemo regimen, and the waitresses looked after him and called him “hon” and one, in particular, knew to keep his water glass full in response to the dehydration caused by his treatment. It was a calm sea in the storm of the medical protocol, and in the midst of his dying. We would sit there, eating waffles, and drinking water, and talking and giggling, until it was time for me to take him home and back to the mysterious task of his saying goodbye to this beautiful world, and for me to head back to Atlanta, grieving the loss of this dear man without whom I would not be here this morning. The last time we went to Waffle House, shortly before he died, I noted how his favorite waitress watchfully kept his water glass filled, but it wasn’t just Cumberland River tap water. It was, well, living water from a deeper well. Maybe she was an angel, right there on Charlotte Avenue, so carefully disguised as a Waffle House waitress. I know she was one of his angels. I made note of her compassion, and I said to Liston, “A very wise man once told me that sometimes the most we can do is to show up, give someone a cold cup of water on a hot day…and sit, and listen, that would be enough pastoral care.” A tear formed in his eyes, and he said “Now William, you know that wasn’t original to me. Sometimes we claim to know all the right notes of the Bible, but can’t hum the tune of it. That’s what the Gospel is all about…humming the tune of compassion….keeping the living water flowing…drinking water from a deeper well.” Liston had taught me long ago, in the classrooms of my beloved Vanderbilt Divinity School, that one can be broken and yet whole, and we can be terminally ill, and healed. And he was still teaching me in that moment on Charlotte Avenue, just as Jesus was still teaching the disciples on this day with the Samaritan woman at the well.

The day with my mentor and professor had indeed been one of exposure to grief, and joy, and for me, a new way of understanding both. We had experienced a shared vulnerability, to be sure, and this is available to us all in wilderness journeys, whether the wilderness is “out there,” or “in here”—including our soul-informed Lenten interior journeys. As the social science researcher Brene’ Brown has noted, courage and transformation paradoxically come from our own places of vulnerability. She writes “When I ask people what is vulnerability, the answers were things like sitting with my wife who has Stage III breast cancer and trying to make plans for our children, or my first date after my divorce, saying I love you first, asking for a raise, sending my child to school being enthusiastic and supportive of him and knowing how excited he is about orchestra tryouts and how much he wants to make first chair and encouraging him and supporting him and knowing that’s not going to happen. To me, vulnerability is courage. It’s about the willingness to show up and be seen in our lives. And in those moments when we show up, I think those are the most powerful meaning-making moments of our lives even if they don’t go well. I think they define who we are.”  In the account of Jesus’ conversation with the woman at the well, Jesus and the woman experienced vulnerability and exposure harrowing in both senses of the term—to vex, and to prepare the soil for harvest. This text is challenging to read because most of us have been subjected to highly imaginative and biblically unwarranted portraits of the woman at the well. These distort our understanding of the text and the truth it reveals. As homiletics professor Fred Craddock reminded us, evangelists aplenty have assumed that the brighter her nails, the darker her mascara and the shorter her skirt, the greater the testimony to the power of the Samaritan woman’s converting word in this passage. How quick we can be to generalize, and to make assumptions in relation to those who may be different, and whose socio-cultural contexts may invite our imaginations to relegate them to the status of the “other.” Conjure any immediate images about Waffle House waitresses, for example—or come to that, even folks like me who choose to eat there—and a random sample is not likely to be entirely positive. The Samaritan woman, whose name we never know, is open and honest, a truth-seeker hindered only by a hypocritical town that forces her to come alone—exposed to the heat of the day—to the well at noon rather than the customary evening hour. Moralizers, however, have painted her as dangerous: beware her seductive ways, her mincing walk, and her eyes waiting in ambush. These spurious speculations miss the point. All we know is that Jesus, as is his custom in John’s Gospel, reveals special knowledge of the individuals he encounters, and alerts them that in meeting him they may encounter the transcendent, and this may reveal truths hidden, well, in the clear light of day at the village well. Jesus does not urge the woman to repent or change her behavior. For those quick to judge her, this can only complicate our ability to understand the text, and to see her authentically. But let us try.

Jesus’ longest-recorded conversation with anyone is the one he has with the Samaritan woman. On many counts it seems extraordinary that it took place at all: a man and a woman in public; a Jew and a Samaritan; a transient and a citizen, one offering “living water” and another caught in the ceaseless rounds of drawing water at the well. But the Holy Spirit in Her mischief was at work. The conversation begins with Jesus’ request for a drink of water. However, through the ensuing exchanges the transient Jew offers more than did Jacob, the patriarch with whose name the well was associated. In fact, Jesus’ knowledge of the woman convinces her that he is a prophet from Jerusalem and prompts her to defend her own tradition of worship on Mt. Gerizim. To her surprise, Jesus does not debate her, he declares that true worship of God is not geographically defined but is defined by God’s own nature, which is spirit and truth. In other words, dear ones, God’s love is love that transcends sex, race, tradition, place and liturgy. If this traveler from Jerusalem is greater than Jacob, is a prophet and yet more than a prophet, the woman has but one category left: in her mind, a God whose nature it is to embrace and respect the dignity of all people in all places is a Messiah. The woman runs to town, not with the answer but only the question, to the city and gives the call to faith, “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” If we wish to be fascinated by this woman, let us be so now. She is a witness, and her witness is invitational—come and see—it is curious, not judgmental; it is within the range permitted by her experience; it is honest with its own uncertainty and openness to mystery; it is for everyone who will hear. How refreshing. Her witness avoids triumphalism, parroting someone else’s conclusions, packaged answers to unasked questions, thinly veiled ultimatums and threats of hell, and assumptions of certainty on theological matters. She does convey, however, her willingness to let her hearers arrive at their own affirmations about Jesus, and they do: “This is indeed the Savior of the world.” John gives to her witness a name which is the very term with which he began his lyrical Gospel: the Samaritan woman, the Greek text reads, spoke “the Word.” Exposure can be dangerous, my friends, and it can also be revelatory. On my Waffle House sojourns with my professor, I learned things about myself that I found scary, and in relation to which I felt vulnerable. For one, I have never since seen a Waffle House waitress the same way again, now having been delivered from my too quick assumptions about the circumstances of that form of employment. In the woman at the well we see exposure—and the vulnerability that it can create—as a means to a deeper encounter with the Word made Flesh. An “other-wise” reading of this text invites us to be mindful of our assumptions. The author bell hooks suggests that we should pay attention to those who speak from the margins—attention, that is, to both the power of those voices, and our all too human tendency to claim to know too much about them, based on our assumptions. May our Lenten journey, with its own forms of exposure and vulnerability, do the same for each of us. Amen. 

Lent 2A – George Yandell

Who said these words?

“There’s no place like home.” Dorothy in Wizard of Oz

“Home is where the heart is.” Pliny the Elder – (CE 23- 79), Como, Italy

“Home sweet home.” Irving Berlin in “America”

“Home is the where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” Robert Frost

“I wish I were homeward bound.” Paul Simon

“You can’t go home again.” Thomas Wolfe

“The Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.’” I wonder – if you and I had been Abram, Sara and Lot, would we have answered Yahweh and followed that command? Who was this God Yahweh anyway, to be giving them such instructions? 

Abram had the same fondness for home we have, I’d imagine. And yet he left everything and followed his Lord’s whimsy. Yet we never hear of Abram wishing to go back home. He went so far from home to get to Canaan, it would be like us flying to Mars and burning the spaceship when we got there. His relationship with Yahweh was founded on a two-way covenant, and depended on trust supreme. Yahweh promised to make of Abram a great nation.

I want to do a thought experiment with you. Close your eyes, breathe deeply and picture your home. The place that’s more home for you than anywhere else. It could be your parents’ home when you were a child, a house you once had, the dwelling you now inhabit. Picture in your mind’s eye your home of homes. What do you most cherish about that place?

Leaving home has meant jarring, difficult moves for many of us. We often leave behind more that we knew at the time. We’ve sometimes pined away for the homes we’ve left, the security, the love that the home held for us. I hear the lessons for today talking about a new home, one that God builds for us. 

Jesus said to Nicodemus, “No one can see the Kingdom of God without being born from above. You must be born of the Spirit.” To be at home in God, we must be born into the domain of God- it becomes home for us.

The Jesus Seminar translates this passage: “No one can experience God’s imperial rule without being reborn from above.” They substitute “God’s imperial rule” for the words ‘kingdom of God” and “RE-born from above” for “born from above.” Why is that? The theme of the necessity of rebirth as the condition for entering God’s domain recurs frequently in the gospels. It appears here and in the Gospel of Thomas 22:1-2, where the subject is nursing babies: “Jesus saw some babies nursing. He said to his disciples, “These nursing babies are like those enter the <Father’s> domain.” The disciples responded, “Then shall we enter the <Father’s> domain as babies?” [From The Five Gospels: What Did Jesus Really Say? Funk, Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, 1993, pp. 407,486.] Being reborn into God’s domain means being nurtured into fullness by God. God’s rule is above all other powers – beyond country, beyond other allegiances.

All of us have seen the sign countless times: John 3:16. The sign stands out, posted on a roadside. A sign held up at a baseball game, a sign painted on the side of a building. These are only three places out of countless others—and it always says the same thing: John 3:16.

We all know by heart, even those of us who weren’t brought up memorizing Bible verses, that it refers to the verse in the gospel for today, from the Jesus Seminar translation: “This is how God loved the world: God gave up an only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not be lost but have real life.” 

It’s a powerful statement and true, but unfortunately, too many people stop there. We are convinced that all we have to do is believe that statement— that there is no response of “So what?” Now, to say that there is more may seem like blasphemy, but there IS more. The ‘so what’ is that we must take the knowledge of God’s love for us and act on it. We have to read the whole of chapter 3—understand what Jesus is saying to Nicodemus about being born from above and then act on what Jesus says about taking on his mission- that the whole world might be saved through him.

“God sent this son into the world not to condemn the world but to rescue the world through him.” [3 paragraphs above adapted from “Synthesis: A Weekly Resource for Preaching”, March issue.]

This is the content of being reborn from above: accepting the mission Jesus chose, and working with him to its fulfillment. It means we’re converted from pilgrims into missioners. And it’s not a one-time event. It’s a process of finding home in community with those who’re also being converted.

Richard Rohr wrote [in The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See (N. Y.: Crossroad, 2013)]: “I have often been puzzled by the common view that conversion is a one-time event. This view does not match my observation of myself or others. Yet such conversion is described in so many stories from all of the world religions. Finally, it became clearer to me what the stories were trying to say. When your ‘program’ changes, you will indeed speak of your conversion as a momentary event, something that happens in an instant. But if you examine the accounts of people’s great moments of breakthrough, they usually are not referring to what they see as much as how they see. Such renewed sight is indeed like being born again-‘once I was blind, and now I see.’ … That’s what true conversion feels like.”

A wise man, Henry Nouwen, said, “There is no such thing as the right place, the right job, the right calling or ministry. I can be happy or unhappy in all situations. I am sure of it, because I have been. I have felt distraught and joyful in situations of abundance as well as poverty, in situations of popularity and anonymity, in situations of success and failure. The difference was never based on the situation itself, but always on my state of mind and heart. When I knew I was walking with God, I always felt happy and at peace. When I was entangled in my own complaints and emotional needs, I always felt restless and divided.” [Henri Nouwen, quoted in “Synthesis: A Weekly Resource for Preaching”, March issue.]

Of all those truisms about home, I think Pliny the Elder and Thomas Wolfe combined have it right, “Home is where the heart is, and you can’t go home again.” St. Augustine said, “You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” 

Lent 1A – George Yandell

What appears most senseless can often seem most meaningful of all. What of Matthew’s story that becomes the gospel for today? This story tells of an event that proves to be a major turning point in Jesus’ personal history. It is recorded in three of the gospels. What could seem more senseless than Jesus getting baptized? Theologians have argued about it for centuries. Who could need more vocational reassurance than Jesus, standing there dripping wet and hearing, “This is my son, the beloved, with whom I am well-pleased?” How many of us have ever had that kind of certainty?

And what sense is there to this wilderness temptation thing? It’s a great and dramatic story out of which preachers get a lot of mileage, but for Jesus, how senseless can it get? Well, there’s this. Matthew says that it wasn’t Jesus’ idea after all, for as soon as he was baptized, “Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” What sort of sense does that make? [The above two paragraphs adapted from Lane Denson’s sermon of 3/9/2003.]

The wilderness temptation is reminiscent of the trials of the wilderness wanderings of Israel, as well as the fasts of Moses and Elijah. During this time Jesus discerns the true meaning of the baptismal proclamation that he is the Son of God. Here the devil represents the role of the tempter rather than the personification of evil.

What specifically do we learn from Jesus’ defining of his ministry through this time in the wilderness? As Mother Teresa wrote in Love: A Fruit Always in Season (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987): “Total surrender consists in giving ourselves completely to God, because God has given God’s self to us. If God owed nothing to us and is ready to impart to us no less than God [full on], shall we answer with just a fraction of ourselves? I give up my own self and in this way induce God to live for me. Therefore to possess God we must allow God to possess our souls.”

Jesus showed us how. Even when weakened by fasting and exposure to the elements—while passionately seeking God’s best for the way his life of service would unfold … amid wrestling with questions of authority and the implications of God’s coming reign … he waited on God. [Adapted from “Synthesis: A Weekly Resource for Preaching”, March 2014 issue.]

To fast can mean to strengthen our staying power. Whether it be the conquering of a bad habit or the establishing of a daily time of devotion, we need to concentrate on getting a firmer grip on our faith. … To fast means to hang on tighter. …

It also can mean to accept certain needed disciplines so that bodily matters will not interfere with, nor dominate, the affairs of the soul. … In brief, to fast in this sense means to make more time for God and thus giving the Holy Spirit more of a chance to work in us. [Adapted from Mark A. Beaufoy in The Parables (Forward Movement, 1971).]

The Matthew passage ends with this sentence. “The devil left Jesus and suddenly the angels came and waited on him.” From dire threat and confrontation to bliss with angelic beings. That’s the shift that God makes with and for us when we yield to the Holy Spirit’s leading. We trust more and more fully, and God wins the day. We look around and the company of angels is those sitting around us in the pews, working with us at CARES, Good Sam, ACES. Singing in the choir. We are found by God in company with folks we never knew would be our companions. The wiles of the devil are thwarted by us depending on one another in community. The host of heaven rejoices with our fellowship. Anything can happen, any moving of the Spirit can make us rejoice and move in love.

Often it’s the wisdom of foolishness that breaks through for us and lifts us out of the desert into community. I love Robert Alter’s fresh translation of the Book of Psalms. [The Book of Psalms, W.W. Norton and Co., p.32, 2007 New York] You might want to look at Psalm 32: 10-11 in your service sheet for comparison’s sake. The last two stanzas in Alter’s translation go like this:

“Many are the wicked’s pains, but who trusts in the Lord, kindness surrounds [that one]. Rejoice in the Lord and exult, O you righteous, sing gladly all [you] upright [people].” It is dire straits turned into giddy exultation. I suspect that’s what Jesus experienced in the angel’s company. Don’t you know he probably laughed with relief and joy at being delivered out of the presence of the devil.

There is in some gothic revival churches a small window above the chancel in the eaves. It is called a ‘hilarion’. Drawn from the same word as ‘hilarious’. A hilarion window sat high in the chapel of Virginia Seminary when I was a student there. In many churches it is situated above the rood screen, where the cross sits above a wooden archway, marking the solemn entrance into the sanctuary. The juxtaposition is startling. The architect was making a statement sort of like Monty Python. Hilarity above somber recollection of the cross. So in that vein, a story.

One hot Sunday morning, a resplendently vested bishop stood outside a small country church waiting not all that patiently for things to get moving when he felt a gentle tug at his sleeve and looked down to see a little girl looking up at him. As their eyes met, the little girl wondered out loud, “Mister, are you a clown?” [ibid, Lane Denson sermon.]

Last Sunday of Epiphany – Ted Hackett

This the second of a “mini-series” of Sermons on “Heaven, Hell, Death and Judgement”…

The so-called “Four Last Things” which all humans must face…

Last week we tackled two of them…Heaven and Hell…

I am sure all of you remember in exquisite detail all of that sermon…

I learned years and years ago not to ask students what I had said in the last lecture…

Because the blank looks caused me so much frustration…

It was not good for my self-esteem!

So, to review, I talked about Heaven and Hell…  

I said that Hell was not Fire and Brimstone and Devils with pitchforks for eternity…

Hell was self-centered alienation which prevents people from being close with each other….from loving each other…

Prevents people from knowing and loving themselves…

Prevents us from knowing and loving God with all our hearts, souls and minds!

We were created to love…

So alienation is Hell!

But, I said, this Hellish alienation does not last forever    …

God is infinitely patient…

God will last the selfish, unhappy sinner out.

Because…think about it…

One soul lost forever would mean God was not able to complete the divine creation…..

Like the Father of the Prodigal Son…

God would have lost a beloved child…Forever…

And God would not be…

Well…  God!

Thus Hell was…to the extent the earliest Christians thought about it…transitory

The purpose of Hell was reform not punishment.

And though for a Hitler or a Putin it may take a long, long time…

No one can resist God’s love forever…

And as I said…

God is very, very patient!

And Heaven is the very opposite of isolation…

Heaven is loving others with your whole being…

Loving yourself as God loves you…

And…loving God with all your heart, soul and mind….

Gathered with angels and archangels and all the company of Heaven…

Including all redeemed sinners…

Banqueting and singing of love…for eternity!

So that brings us to today…

The last Sunday before Lent…

And we have to talk about the remaining two of the Last Things…

Death and Judgement.

In the Christian tradition, of course, God’s Judgement of us…is commonly thought to be executed by God….or an intermediary Saint like Peter…

Deciding…as soon as we die, what will be our eternal destiny…

Heaven or Hell…

Death was sure…

The Good and the Bad died…

But..then what?

Already in the 2nd century Christians were grappling with the issue of whether Martyrs who died for being Christians should not get better treatment in heaven than ordinary Christians who stayed under the radar and died peacefully.

The long…rather boring work called the Shepherd of Hermas said the Christian Heroes go to a higher, better place than ordinary folks…

Gradually, over the years, more and more people came to believe that imperfect loved ones wind up in Heaven rather than eternally in hell-fire…

Though they probably were not yet ready for being in the full presence of God.

And so they began believing in an intermediate state to which most, imperfect people go when they die.

In that intermediate state their souls do penance, and helped by the prayers of the Faithful on earth, grow more and more in the Love of God til they are finally ready to see God in all God’s splendor and beauty.

It stayed that way in the Eastern Orthodox Church

In the West, though, the emphasis was on “paying up” for earthly sins…

Thus “purgatory” became sort of a minor Hell…painful but temporary.

Hell, however, was still there for serious sinners.

Christians should pray for the souls in Purgatory…

They are still members of the Holy Communion of Saints…

The Hitlers and Putins are lost forever…

Consigned to eternal Hell-Fire!

This theological scheme kept both Hell for the really Evil and purification or Spiritual Growth for ordinary sinners…

It sort of satisfied our sense of justice…

I mean I want my Uncle Louie to join my saintly (though impish) Grandmother in Heaven…

I do not much want Hitler to be redeemed to Heaven!

And that, you see…that not redeeming Hitler…

Is a kind of justice…

But it is not forgiving.

One of the hard things about Christianity is the thing about loving your enemies…even the really evil ones…

It is hard…

But if one soul is lost forever…

If even one God-created soul does not finally come to love God and the neighbor…

God’s Kingdom lacks something…

And God is not…well…GOD!

Too much to ask, you say. “Can’t bring myself to forgive that much!”

Well….the vast majority of us will need time, the Prayers of the Church and the

Grace of God

to be able to forgive and love our enemies.

That is the essence of Purgatory…

That in the end…

Justice and Love will co-inhere

Justice and Love will be one in the same thing…

Even if you and I can’t really get our heads around that idea!

You see…judgment is really part of death…

It is not standing before St. Peter who is seated behind a judge’s raised desk peering down at us…  

It is simply having who and what we are out in the open…especially to ourselves.

It is how much we can gradually overcome our fear.

Our fear of others…

How charitable we are able to be…

Our lives are filled with decisions…

      We know the big ones…

             Who and when to marry…

                 What career to pursue…

                      When and how many children to have

                           Those stand out in memory…

But most decisions are not those big ones…

      They are the little, everyday ones…

             The ones that we hardly notice…

The beggar by the side of the road at an intersection…

Your child who wants to play ball while you are doing the taxes…and you are not in a good mood!

The friend in the hospital who you are too busy to visit…

The guy who makes racist remarks at a cocktail party…

And it feels too uncomfortable to confront him!

Those are the little sins we commit and forget.

And then there are the nice…often really good things we do…

Working in a food kitchen…

Giving a woman…huddled and shivering on the street…ten or twenty dollars…

Working for a candidate who will help the poor and disabled…

Supporting an agency that finds homes and work for foreign, displaced people…

Greeting a shabby visitor at Church…

Comforting a grieving co-worker

The list goes on…

      But you get the idea…

             But here is the thing…

Every time we make a little decision…

Every time…

That decision changes us!  

For better or for worse…

Those decisions make us more or less able to stand the atmosphere of Heaven…

Those decisions form…make us…who we are!

That accumulation of little decisions…

Forms us into people who can love others…

whether they seem like us or whether we feel easy with them…or not…

Will we decide… “yes…She is my neighbor!”

Every day of our lives…

We are making little decisions…

And those decisions are gradually forming us.

And when we die…

When we “pass on” as we say…

The question of what happens is not up to St. Peter…

It has been…

And will be…

Up to us.

Because what happens next follows naturally from who we are…

And over a lifetime… 

We have made the decisions that make us who we are…

Are we ready to be fully in God’s presence?…

Are we ready to love as God loves?

Are we ready to embrace all those others who we used to despise?

Are we ready to love?

To love God with our whole being?

To love others as ourselves?

And…to actually love ourselves…

as God loves us?

Those are the four “Last Things”

the measures of how we stand with Heaven…

the yardsticks of how much love we can stand!

How much acceptance we can stand…

How much…God we can stand.

And how much growing in Christ’s love do we have to do to be able to stand Heaven…

Those are questions I will ask myself this Lent…

I know part of the answer…

And to the extent that I can look at these questions honestly…

It’s because I know God will not give up on me…

And at the end…

No matter how long it takes…

God will bring me to God’s Self…

And I will be to myself…and to all others…

Not as a stranger…

But as beloved…for all Eternity.

And so with all of us… That is…all of us!