April 10, 2022
Palm Sunday – George Yandell
This day in our calendar is Palm Sunday / the Sunday of the Lord’s Passion. It moves from pageantry to horror. Our palm procession mirrors the excitement in Jerusalem 1,992 years ago. Jesus was entering the great city, the crowd was chanting, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” His disciples were giddy, I imagine. Then so quickly the joy turns to sadness on Maundy Thursday, then disbelief and horror on Good Friday.
None of my feelings or thoughts pondering the events of Holy Week comes remotely close to what Simon of Cyrene experienced on the day he ventured into Jerusalem and suddenly found himself carrying a condemned man’s instrument of death. But they are similar, in that reality has intruded on the joy of palms and hosannas, and somewhere in that reality Jesus is going on to die.
We moderns feel helpless about the coarsening of our world. We endure it, we try small survival strategies, we wish for better, but in the end we lock our doors and hope that the angel of death passes by.
Jesus is just as helpless today as we are. The Christian era has witnessed humanity’s worst barbarism – entire populations slaughtered, peoples enslaved, compulsory ignorance made public policy. Lies have been treated as clever, thievery as necessary and cruelty as manly. Much of that barbarism has been done in the name of Jesus, as if he were an angry volcano-god demanding human sacrifices.
April 3, 2022
Lent 5C – Byron Tindall
Matthew and Mark record an incident in Jesus’s life similar to what we read in John’s gospel today. Both of the synoptics have the event taking place at the house of Simon the leper, also a resident of Bethany, rather than at the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus.
Matthew and Mark have an unnamed woman pour the ointment over Jesus’s head rather than on his feet. Both Mark and John said the anointing oil was made of nard.
Matthew, Mark, and John are not in agreement about who complained about the perceived costly waste of money by either Mary or the unknown woman.
For Matthew, it was the disciples. Mark reports, “But some who were there said to one another in anger, ‘Why was the ointment wasted in this way?’” In John’s gospel, it was Judas Iscariot who raised the possibility of selling the nard. The complainers in Matthew said it could have been sold for a large sum of money. Mark valued the ointment at more than 300 denarii while John reported the cost that could have been obtained by selling it at exactly 300 denarii. The denarius was the usual wage per day for a laborer. Any way you look at it, that would have a tidy sum of money for the poorer residents of Palestine at that time.
John has Martha in her apparent usual place — that of preparing the meal and serving it.
March 27, 2022
Lent IV: “Laerte” – Ted Hackett
Today is the Fourth Sunday in Lent,
Since Lent has five Sundays then add Holy Week, and this is about half-way through the season of penitence.
Today has a number of names…Mid-Lent, Refreshment Sunday, Mothering Sunday and Laerte Sunday…
“Mothering Sunday” because Monastic Lenten austerity was given some relief and mothers would bring cakes to their monk sons. This developed into the custom of visiting the local Cathedral on this day…the cathedral clergy were “canons” under Monastic obedience.
The name ‘Laerte” comes from the first words of the old Roman Mass “Entrance Song”: “Laerte Ierusalem”… “Rejoice Jerusalem and gather ‘round all you who love her…”
And it led to the custom of “lightening up” the somber vestment colors of Lent…some parishes use Rose instead of purple today.
O.K….that’s the Liturgical Factoid lesson for today!
Let’s talk about the Gospel.
I have been conversing with the “Parable of the Prodigal Son” for around 50 years…
It was part of my Ph. D. Dissertation and I have been fascinated and confused by it ever since…
I am still trying to make sense out of the realism and insight of the story on one hand…
And the bizarre, jolting backbone of the thing on the other.
I still am not sure what to do with it!
Why?
Well,
March 20, 2022
Lent 3C – George Yandell
I want to talk about changing hearts and community. It all starts in the passage from Exodus- God speaks to Moses from the burning bush. God recounts to Moses who God is in the lineage of those who preceded Moses. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob all encountered God, but Moses’ encounter was personal, direct and terrifying. God gives Moses his marching orders, to rescue God’s people from Egypt. And Moses says, timidly, terrified, I think, “When I tell the Israelites you sent me, and they ask, ‘What is the name of the one who sent you, what shall I tell them?’ God said to Moses, in a voice like the Wizard of Oz in capital letters, “I AM WHO I AM. Tell them I AM has sent you to them.” The name I AM in Hebrew comes out as ‘Yahweh,’ a verb. That moment changed the course of Hebrew history, and one can argue, the course of salvation for humankind. The gospels tell us Jesus is descended from Moses, sent to rescue God’s people forever and for good.
The gospel story of the fig tree follows grim pronouncements from Jesus. Galileans whose blood Pontius Pilate mingled with their sacrifices, the 18 killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them. “Unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did. Don’t think you’re any better– Repent or perish!” says Jesus. Luke has Jesus warning about a ruthless God, which is unlike Jesus in the other portions of the gospels.