April 6, 2023
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,
April 2, 2023
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;
March 26, 2023
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,
March 19, 2023
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.