Jamie Parsley's Blog, page 22

5 Easter

 

May 15, 2022

 

 

Revelation 21.10, 22-22; John 13.31-35

+ If you’re anything like me, if you have been active in the Church over the years, you no doubt have encountered other Christians who tell us things like this:

 

“You know we’re in the last times, right?”

 

Or,

 

“When the Rapture comes, you want go with it, because to be left behind is terrible.”

 

I personally never understood these comments until I later heard that they come from some Evangelical churches that have found these interpretations of the Book of Revelation to mean that what is written in that book is happening right now.

 

And with the popularity of such awful books as the Left Behind series (which I personally find to be major manipulations of scripture, not to mention very badly written books), we have seen even more clearly some Christian’s ideas of how the Book Revelation somehow is interpreted in the light of current events.

 

Later, as I sort of studied it a bit, I found a big problem with such teaching:

 

Almost every Christians since the time of Jesus believed they were in the “end times.”

 

People thought it was the end times when the Black Death rolled through Europe.

 

People thought it was the End Times when the Protestant Reformation raged, or when the Turks invaded Europe or when the French Revolution happened.

 

People thought it was the end times when World War I came.

 

People thought it was the End Times during the 1918 Flu Epidemic.

 

People definitely thought it was the end times when Hitler rose to power.

 

People in the 1950s were saying it was the end times with the Communist threat from Russia and China.

 

Or they were saying it was the end of times when kids started listening to Rock and Roll or the Beatles came to the U.S, or anytime during the very tumultuous 1960s.

 

People thought it was the end of the world just a few years ago when the Pandemic was at it’s worst.

 

I remember everyone playing “It’s the End of the World As We Know it” by R.E.M.

 

And I remember my aunt, who belonged to the First Assembly of God Church, saying it was the end times in the 1980s.

 

I remember her saying that we should not have VISA cards because VISA was a clever guise for the Mark of the Beast—the numbers 666.

 

If we were to believe everyone who cried it was the end times, we could honestly say that the end times have been happening for at least 2,000 years. 

 

I solved my confusion about this issue by doing the only thing I could do in the fact of all that confusion:

 

I simply re-reading the Book of Revelation from beginning to end.

 

And you know what happened?

 

I was able to claim—or re-claim—it, and helped me to read it anew.

 

And I was able to see that the Book of Revelation really isn’t about “End Times”

 

There is no Rapture in the Book of Revelation.

 

Still, I think there are a lot of us who feel very differently about the Book of Revelation.

 

Revelation is a strange book.

 

It can be a frightening book.

 

But—and I know this might seem strange to many Christians— I don’t see it as a book of prophecy, as many Christians do.

 

I don’t see it saying anything definitely about future governments or some messianic Anti-Christ in our midst or that we are living in the so-called “last days” or what have you.

 

Mind you, I do believe “anti-Christs” come and go through history.

 

I do believe that powerful people who represent every anti-Jesus, anti-Christian ideals of loving God and loving others and respecting the worth of dignity of all peoples are real, and those people are, by definition anti Christ.

 

But, for that matter, anytime any of us run counter to these Christian ideals, we too become kind of “anti-Christs” to those around us.

 

Still, what I do see it doing is speaking to us through some beautiful and powerful poetry on what is happening in our lives, right now, as Christians, and about how, in the end, Christ is victorious.  

 

I think it is important for us to re-claim Revelation in this way —and, in doing so, re-read it with a new lens. 

In our reading this morning from Revelation, we find some very strange esoteric images—not an uncommon thing when we read Revelation.

 

We find this morning these images of a new heaven and a new earth, of this new Jerusalem, where death is no more or tears or crying.

 

It is a place of beauty and glory.  

 

It is a place of unending life.

 

And it is here that I think the Book of Revelation speaks loudly to us.

 

Even we, as Christians, sometimes struggle with the reality of death in our lives.

 

Even we fear it at times.

 

And that is all right.

 

That is normal.

 

Of course, death is a part of life, and certainly it’s part of my job as a priest.

 

I knew that going into it.  

 

But, let me tell you: it still is hard, often.  

 

And for people who have to deal with this mystery of death on a regular basis, there have to be ways to find strength and comfort in the midst of death.  

 

One of the ways I find my way through this sometimes constant dealing with death is by turning to the scriptures.

 

There is a common theme we find through all Scripture.

 

And that common theme is this:

 

the defeat of death.  

 

Or as the great Episcopal theologian William Stringfellow called it: “authority over death.”

 

I agree with him 100%.  

 

I think he is absolutely right about that.

 

Stringfellow saw it most profoundly in the life of Jesus.  

 

There we see this authority over death most profoundly.

 

We see it every time Jesus healed the sick, calmed the storms, cast out demons, ate with sinners, cleansed the temple, raised the death, carried the Cross.

 

And of course, in the Resurrection, which we are still celebrating in this season of Easter, it is all about authority over death.

 

In all of this, we see the God of life—God in Jesus—being victorious over death.

This view of life over death speaks to us most profoundly during this Easter season.

 

During this  season, what we have found most vital to our understanding of living into this Easter faith is the startling fact that death truly does not have power over us.

 

We, as Christians, cannot let the power of death control and direct our lives.  

 

As Christians, as followers of Jesus who crossed that awful boundary between life and death, and came back, we must truly be defiant to death.  

 

Of course, that ultimate victory over death happens only when we can face death honestly.

 

True victory over death is when we can see death in the light we hear about in today’s reading from Revelation.

 

Only then do we realize that death has no victory over us.

 

Because of what happened on Easter, because of the Resurrection, because Jesus did die, yes, but God raised him from that tomb, and because Jesus walked victorious upon the chains of death, we know now death does not have the last word in our lives.

 

 Many of us know that it would be so easy just to give into this victory death strives for over life.

 

Mourning does that do us.

 

It weakens us and saps our energies from us.

 

We all get stuck in mourning patterns.  

 

But, for us Christians, we can’t be stuck in such death.

 

We must live.

 

And we must move forward.  

 

We must  stand up against death.

 

I can tell you that, right now, in my own life, I am very tired of death.

 

I am weary of dealing directly with it.

 

I am tired of dealing with its after-effects.

 

I am tired of dealing with its seemingly overpowering presence.

 

But, standing up to death, even when we’re sick of it, is not easy.

 

Choosing life, with all its uncertainties, can be scary.

 

Even when moving forward into life  and living our lives fully and completely, we realize it can be frightening.

 

We are, after all, heading into the future which is unknown to us.

But that, again, is what I love about Revelation.

 

What Revelation promises to us, through all that poetry and imagery, is that death will lose, hatred will lose, violence will lose, evil will lose, war will lose, racism will lose—and goodness, and holiness and LIFE will be victorious.  

 

That isn’t wishful thinking.  That’s isn’t being naïve.

 

Rather, this is what it means to be a Christian.  

 

This is what it means to believe in the God of life.

 

That is what I means to follow Jesus.

 

Yes, following Jesus means following him to the Cross and to that dark tomb.  

 

And to death, yes.

 

But it also means following him into the great unknown on the other side of the Cross and the tomb—into that glorious, light-filled, unending life that swallows up death and darkness and war once and for all.

 

It means following him to the point in which the God of unending life raises him—and us—into unending life as well.

"See, the home of God is among mortals,” St. John tells us in our reading for today.
“He will dwell with them as their God;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away."

Those are words of absolute and glorious victory.

 

But more so, they are words of life—of a life that goes on forever and ever.

 

As we travel through these last days of Easter, let us do so with true Easter joy.

 

Let us do so rejoicing from the very core of our bodies.

 

We are alive.  

 

This morning, we are alive.

 

Life is in us.

 

We are followers of Jesus.

 

We are filled with life and love.

 

As we heard Jesus say in our Gospel reading for today, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciple, if you have love for one another.”

 

Those words are our words this morning as well.

 

We are filled with love and life.

 

We are celebrating love and life.

 

And it is all very, very good.  

 

We have much to be thankful for and in which to rejoice.

 

So, let us be thankful for this life.

 

Let us rejoice in it.  

 

And let us realize that in rejoicing in our lives and in the life within each of us, God has truly prepared for us, as we heard in our collect this morning, “such good things as surpass our understanding.”

Let us pray.

 

God of life, you give us life. You lift us from the tombs of death and give us true victory over death; instill in us true Easter joy, and let us live out your commandment of love; in Jesus’ Name we pray. Amen

4 Easter

 

Good Shepherd Sunday

 

May 8, 2022

 

Psalm 23

 

+ Today is a special day.

 

Yes, it’s Mother’s Day of course.

 

But, it is Good Shepherd Sunday.

 

It’s Good Shepherd Sunday because of this wonderful reading we have in our Gospel reading for today, as well as our reading from Revelation, and, of course, the very familiar 23rd Psalm

 

But, every year we celebrate Good Shepherd Sunday without really thinking about it.

 

How many times in our lives have we heard the 23rd Psalm?

 

How many funerals has it been said or sung?  

 

For the most part, we just don’t even really think about it.

 

After all, shepherds are just not a part of our modern lives.

 

Yet, when we really think about this image—of God being our shepherd—it still, weirdly, resonates for us.

 

We kind of get it. 

 

And we are comforted by it.

 

And it still does have meaning for us.

 

God as Good Shepherd.

 

It’s a great image for God.

 

In it, we encounter the compassion of our God.  

 

Certainly, for the people of Jesus’ day, this image of the Good Shepherd is probably one of the most perfect images Jesus could have used.

 

They would have understood what a good shepherd was and what a bad shepherd was.

 

The good shepherd was the shepherd who actually cared for his flock.  

 

He or she looked out for them, he watched after them.  The Good Shepherd guided the flock and led the flock.  

 

He or she led the flock to a place to eat.

 

It’s a wonderful way to try to describe God’s goodness to us.  

 

This image implies that God really—legitimately—cares for us and loves us.

 

This is an important aspect of the role of the Good Shepherd.  

 

The Good Shepherd didn’t just feed the flock.  

 

Rather the good shepherd led the flock to the choicest green pastures and helped them to feed themselves. 

 

In this way, the Good Shepherd is more than just a coddling shepherd.  

 

He or she is not the co-dependent shepherd.  

 

The Good Shepherd doesn’t take each sheep individually, pick them up, and hand-feed each one of them.  

 

Rather, the Good Shepherd guides and leads the sheep to green pastures and allows them to feed themselves. 

 

The Good Shepherd also protects the flock against the many dangers out there. 

 

He or she protects the flock from the wolves, from getting too near cliffs, or holes, or falling into rivers or lakes.

 

She or he cares for the flock.

 

And that’s VERY important.

 

Let’s face it, there are many dangers out there.  

 

There are many opportunities for us to trip ourselves, to get lost, to get hurt.

 

If we follow the Good Shepherd, if we allow ourselves to be led by him, we realize that those pitfalls are difficult, yes, but they don’t defeat us.  

 

Of course, the journey isn’t an easy one.  

 

We can still get hurt along the way.  

 

Bad things can still happen to us.  

 

There are predators out there, waiting to hurt us.  

 

There are storms brewing in our lives, waiting to rain down upon us.

 

But, with our eyes on the Shepherd, we know that the bad things that happen to us will not destroy us, because the Shepherd is there, close by, watching out for us—caring for us.  

 

We know that in those bad times—those times of darkness when predators close in, when storms rage—he will rescue us.

 

This is what we are looking for in our lives—a savior, a protector. 

 

We are all longing for someone who will comes to us and rescue us from all the bad things of this life. 

 

And not just Superman who sweeps down from the skies and pulls us out of danger, and then just nods to us and flies away.

 

We long to have this protector, this defender who knows us and genuinely cares for us.

 

That’s what makes the Good Shepherd so special.

 

The Good Shepherd knowshis flock.

 

If one is lost, he knows it is lost and will not rest until it is brought back into the fold. 

 

This is the kind of relationship we have with our Good Shepherd. 

 

We know God because God knows us. 

 

God knows us and calls us each by our name.

 

And loves us for just who we are—no matter who we are.

 

The Good Shepherd reminds us that we don’t have some vague, distant God.  

 

We don’t have a God who lets us fend for ourselves.  

 

We instead have a God who leads us and guides us, a God who knows us each by name, a God who despairs over the loss of even one of us.

 

All these are important images, vital images to explain the relationship God has with us and we with God.

 

I just came across this great quote from Chad Bird

 

[image error]

 

We have a God whose goodness and mercy chases us and seeks us out.

 

A God whose goodness and mercy follows us wherever we go and in whatever we do.

 

But the Good Shepherd’s role  doesn’t end there.  

 

This isn’t just about me as an individual and God.  

 

The image of the Good Shepherd must be taken and applied by us.  

 

Any of us who follow Jesus are called to be good  shepherds in turn.

 

We must love and love fully those who around us.  

 

We must care for those people who walk this path with us.  

 

We must look out for our loved ones and even our enemies, we must respect the worth and dignity of all people, and we must shepherd them in whatever ways we can in our own lives.

 

Again, this is not easy, especially when it seems we are lost at times, when we are falling into the traps life sets before us, when our alleluias during this Easter season feels cold and lonely.   

 

But, that’s the way God works, sometimes.  

 

Sometimes, God’s works through our brokenness and helps us to guide others in their brokenness.  

 

Sometimes the best Good Shepherd is the one who has known fully what a lost sheep feels like, who knows the coldness and loneliness of being that lost sheep.

 

So, on this day in which we celebrate the Shepherd who leads and guides, whose goodness and mercy chases us, let us not only be led, but let us also lead.   

 

On this day that we look to the Shepherd who guides, let us be guided and let us guide others.  

 

And let our alleluia on this Good Shepherd Sunday, even if it is a cold and lonely Alleluia, still be an Alleluia nonetheless.  

 

Let it be the sound we make, even in the cold and lonely places we sometimes find ourselves in.  

 

And let us, in that place, know that, even there, we are still experiencing the amazing glory and all-encompassing love of our God.

 

Let us pray.

Good Shepherd, you are our guardian and our guide, you know us and call us each by name; be with us as we journey through this world and seek to serve so that we may be good shepherds to those around us; we ask this in Jesus Name. amen.

 

 

3 Easter

 

May 1, 2022

 

John 21: 1-19

 

+ This past Thursday, I had my last class of my first semester at Concordia.

 

In fact, I will be leaving immediately after Mass today so I can head over to Concordia for commence this afternoon.

 

My students gave a wonderful reading at which some of you attended.

 

I had nine great student poets who took very seriously what it means to learn abo0ut the art and structure and form and purpose of poetry.

 

And I was proud of all of them as I heard them read poems that they worked on, and revised and rewrote.

 

One of this things I drilled into my students during these past few months is something I learned when I was in graduate school, studying poetry.

 

It essentially came down to a great quote from the British literary critic, A. Alvarez.

 

He said, essentially, it’s good to be an apprentice.

 

You learn the task—in this case, of poetry—so that “when the Devil takes you by the throat and shakes you,” it is then, that you’ll know what to do.

 

It is then, that you become a poet.

 

It has been great advice.

 

And I think it’s advice that can be used in multiple situations.

 

So, the question for all of you this morning is: When the Devil takes YOU by the throat and shakes you, what do you do?

 

What do you do when you find yourself at the left hand of God, a phrase that comes from Fr. Richard Rohr about being in a bad place in your life?

 

What do you do when the bad things of this life are thrown at you?

 

Do you shut down, and curl up and just wait for it to pass?

 

Do you freeze up and just brace yourself for it?

 

Do you react and rage at the injustice of it?

 

Or do you confront it all?

 

When the “Devil” takes me by the throat, when I find myself at the left hand of God (and I’ve been there MANY times in my life!) do you know what I do?

 

I make myself busy.

 

When I was diagnosed with cancer, when my father died very suddenly, when any of the bad things happen, I just get busy.

 

I do something.

 

Anything.

 

Because not doing something is worse than the Devil’s cold hand on my throat.

 

However, I will say this: when my mother died, I shut down to a large extent.

 

I did not do something simply because I couldn’t do anything.

 

The shock of her death and the deep level of emotional pain prevented me from doing something.

 

And that, to me, was so much worse.

 

Doing something in the face of the Devil—doing something when you find yourself on the left hand of God—is so much more important than freezing up and collapsing.

 

In this morning’s Gospel, we find the Apostles doing something very much like that.

 

They aren’t sitting around doing nothing.

 

They are doing some thing.

 

They are keeping busy.

 

In the wake of the murder of Jesus, in the wake of his resurrection, in the wake of his appearing to them—in the wake of this unusual, extraordinary activity in their lives—they do the most ordinary thing in their lives.  

 

They go fishing.

 

They pick up their nets and they go out onto the water.

 

No doubt, considering all that had happened to them in the previous days and weeks, their minds were reeling.  

 

But, now, they are doing something they knew how to do.

 

Something that gave them some comfort, no doubt.   

 

Fishing is what they did, after all.

 

Fishing is what their fathers did and no doubt what their grandfathers and great-grandfathers did as well.

 

Fishing was in their blood.

 

It was all they knew—until Jesus came into their lives.  

 

And, no doubt, when the extraordinary events of Jesus’ murder and resurrection happened, the only way they could find some normalcy in their life was by going fishing.

 

The fact is, this is probably the last time they would ever go fishing together.

 

Their old life had once and for all passed away with the voice that calls to them from the shore.  

 

Their jobs as fishermen would change with the words “Feed my sheep.”

 

In that instant, they would go from fishermen to shepherds.

 

No longer would they be fishing for actual fish.

 

Now they would be the feeding the sheep of Jesus’ flock.

 

That symbolic number of 153 seems to convey to us that the world now has become their lake.

 

And what is particularly poignant about all of this is Jesus doesn’t come into their lives to change them into something else.

 

He comes into their lives and speaks to them in language they understand.

 

He could have said to them: “Go out and preach and convert.”

 

But to fishermen and shepherds, that means little or nothing.  

 

They are fishermen, not rabbis or priests.

 

They are not theologians.

 

Instead, Jesus says, “Feed my sheep.”

 

This they would understand.

 

 In those simple words, they would have got it.  

 

And when he says “feed my sheep,” “Shepherd my sheep,” it was not just a matter of catching and eating.

 

It was a matter of catching and nurturing.

 

And this calling isn’t just for those men back then.

 

That voice from the shore is calling us too.

 

In a sense, we are called by Jesus as well to be shepherds like Peter and the fellow apostles.  

 

And those around us—those who share this world with us—are the ones Jesus is telling us to feed.

 

It isn’t enough that we come here to church on a Sunday morning to be fed.

 

A lot of us think that’s what church is about.

 

It’s about me being fed.

 

It’s about me being nurtured.

 

To some extent, yes.

 

But, if all we do is come to church to be fed and then not to turn around and feed others, we are really missing the point.

 

We, in turn, must go out and feed.  

 

And this command of Jesus is important.

 

Jesus asks it of Peter three times—one time for each time Peter denied him only a few weeks before.  

 

Those words of Jesus to Peter are also words to us as well.

 

In the wake of the devastating things that happen in our lives, the voice of Jesus is a calm center.

 

Amid the chaos of the world, the calm, cool voice of Jesus is still saying to us, as we cope in our ordinary ways, “feed my sheep.”

 

Because, it is in these strange and difficult times that people need to be fed and nourished.  

 

Not just by me, the priest, only.

 

But by all of us—all of who call ourselves followers of Jesus.

 

It is in times like these that we need to be fed, and it is in times like these that we need to feed others as well.

 

That, in a sense, is what it means to be a Christian.

 

Following Jesus, as we all know, is not easy.  

 

The fact is: it’s probably the hardest thing one can do.  

 

Jesus is not present to us as he was present to those fishermen in this morning’s Gospel.

 

He is not cooking us a breakfast when we come back from ordinary work.  

 

This God of Jesus, this God he keeps telling us to love and to serve, is sometimes a hard God to love and serve.

 

Loving a God who is not visible—who is not standing before us, in flesh and blood, is not easy.  

 

And I’m sure I don’t have to tell anyone here this morning: loving our neighbors—those people who share our world with us—as ourselves, is not easy by any means.

 

It takes constant work to love.

 

It takes constant discipline to love as Jesus loved.  

 

It takes constant work to love ourselves—and most of us don’t love ourselves—and it takes constant work to love others.

 

But look at the benefits.  

 

Look at what our world would be like if we loved God, if we loved ourselves and loved others as ourselves.  

 

It was be ideal.  

 

It would truly be the Kingdom of God, here on earth.  

 

It would be exactly what Jesus told us it would be like.

 

But to do this—to bring this about—to love God, to love ourselves, to love each other, it’s all very hard work.

 

Some would say it’s impossible work.  

 

There are people, I’ll confess, I don’t want to love.

 

I don’t want to love those people who hurt me, or who hurt people I actually do love.

 

Sometimes I can’t love them.

 

I’m not saying I hate them.

 

I’m just saying that sometimes I feel nothing for a person who has wronged me or one of my loved ones.

 

In that instant, it really is hard to be a follower of Jesus.

 

Certainly, it seems overwhelming at times.  

 

Let’s face it, to live as Jesus expects us to live, to serve as Jesus calls us to serve, to love as Jesus loves—it would just be so much easier to not do any of it.   

 

Being a Christian means living one’s life fully and completely as a follower of Jesus.

 

It means being a reflection of God’s love and goodness in the world.

 

 A quote you’ve heard me share many, many time is this one of  St. Augustine: “Being a Christian means being an Alleluia from head to toe.”

 

It means being an Alleluia even when the bad things in life happen.

 

It means being an Alleluia—in our service to others—when we would rather go fishing.

 

It means, occasionally, going and feeding the sheep rather than going off fishing and being a busybody when the bad things in life happen. 

 

In the midst of all the things in the world that confuse us—as we struggle to make sense of the world—the voice of Jesus is calling to us and is telling us to “feed my sheep.”

 

Because in feeding those sheep, you know what happens: we too are fed.

 

In nurturing Christ’s sheep, we too are nurtured.

 

See, it all does work out.

 

But we have to work at it for it to work out.

 

So, let us do just that.

 

Let us feed those Jesus calls us to feed.

 

And let us look for the Alleluia of our lives in that service to others.

 

In finding the Alleluia amidst the darkness, we—in our bodies and in our souls—become—from our head to our toes—an Alleluia.

 

 

Let us pray.

God of life, you are the God of the Alleluia, the God of Resurrection, the God of Unending Life; in those moments when we find ourselves struggling under the grasp of the Devil, in those moments when we find ourselves at that bleak place at your left hand, keep alive within us the alleluias we sing in this season. Let us be defiant even in those dark moments, so that we may live into the glory you promise us in the Resurrection of Jesus your Son, in whose Name we pray. Amen.

Requiem for One Known Only to God April 20, 2022

 It was a truly beautiful Requiem Mass last night for the unknown person whose ashes were unclaimed for 60 years. Afterward we all processed out to the memorial garden for the Committal to finally lay this person to rest.

Censing the Urn Censing the Urn The Commendation The Committal


Placing the ashes in the ground. 

Easter

 

April 17, 2022

 

John 20.1-18

 

 

+ I know that I’m going to be talking about this for years to come, but…

I have found myself these last few days thinking back to Easter two years ago.

Easter 2020 was one of the bleakest Easters I’ve ever experienced.

This church was empty.

The alleluias we exclaimed and sung that day were somewhat hollow.

9 people attended Mass that day—which consisted of the small pod of people who were helping with liturgies at that time, including our fledgling Livestream.

Even last year, although we were in a better place, still did not feel like ‘normal.”

Last year we were all still masked.

Our Holy Week liturgies were still sparsely attended.

Things didn’t feel like “normal” yet.

But, do you notice it this year?

It’s different.

We’re in a different place this year.

For those who attended our Holy Week liturgies this year, you definitely felt it and experienced it.

Our attendance numbers were much better than they even were in 2019.

And we even broke our attendance numbers for the Holy Saturday liturgy.

 

This is what Easter is all about.

Renewal.

Life after what seemed like such bleakness and death and sickness.

I have not felt this level gmailof joy during Holy Week and Easter ina  logn time.

And this morning, to make it even more incredible, we get to celebrate the baptism of Odin Jon Benson.

This, to me, is what it’s all about.

 

If anybody asks me, so what do you love most about being a Christian, I always say, Easter.

 

What isn’t there to love?

 

This is what it’s all about.

 

That holy moment—that moment when everything changed—when God raised Jesus from the tomb was the essential moment.  

 

The Jesus who appears to us on this Easter morning is not a ghost.

 

He is not a figment of our imagination.

 

He is not an illusion.

 

And this story isn’t a fairy tale.

 

Every so often, someone will come up to me and ask that age-old question: “Do you really believe in the Resurrection? Do really you believe that God raised Jesus from the grave?”

 

And my answer is always this: “Why not?”

 

Why couldn’t God do this?

 

And if we look long and hard at what happened on that Easter morning, we realize that what happened there was more than just some vague experience for some ancient people.

 

What happened to Jesus happens to us as well.

 

Everything since that point has been broken open for us.

 

Our old fear of death and dying—that’s all gone.

 

Because now we know that what we once held to be a mystery, is no longer a mystery.

 

What happens to us when we die?

 

We know now, because Jesus has been there already.

 

Jesus has gone there and by going there has defeated death.

 

What seemed to be the end—the bleak and horrible end on Good Friday afternoon—has been broken apart.

 

And what we are faced with is life.

 

Life that never ends.

 

Now, when people ask me if I believe in the Resurrection, I say that I do, but I usually leave it there.

 

Anything beyond my belief that it happened—and that it will happen for us—is beyond me.

 

I don’t understand it fully.

 

I still find bits and pieces of it being revealed to me.

 

I find on bad days or skeptical days that I’m, not certain I believe in it.

 

 

But what I have discovered is that, mostly, I find one deep, strong emotion coming forth in me when I ponder the Resurrection.

 

And that emotion is: joy.

 

In our Gospel reading for today, we find joy.

 

Joy comes to Mary Magdalene when she realizes that it is Jesus, resurrected, standing before her.

 

We can almost feel that joy emanating from her as she proclaims to the others: “I have seen the Lord.”

 

Joy is an emotion we seem to overlook.

 

We think, maybe of joy as some kind of warm, fuzzy feeling.

 

But joy is more than just feeling warm and fuzzy.

 

Joy is a confident emotion.

 

It is an emotion we can’t manufacture.

 

We can’t make joy happen within us.

 

Joy comes to us and comes upon us and bubbles up within us.

 

Joy happens when everything comes together and we know that all is good.

 

This morning we are feeling joy over the Resurrection—over the fact that today we celebrate the destruction of everlasting death.

 

See why I like Easter so much.

 

Easter, however, is what it’s all about to be a Christian.

 

What I talk about when I talk about Easter is that fact that today is truly the embodiment of the joy we should all feel as Christians.

 

Today is a day of joy. 

 

Today, we are all filled with joy at the resurrection and the fact that the resurrection will happen to us too.

 

This is a joy that sustains us and lifts us up when we need lifting up.

 

It is a joy that causes us to see what others cannot see.

 

The Resurrection reminds us that God dwells with us.

 

God dwells within us.

 

And to see God, all we have to do is look around and see God in the faces of those around us.

 

See, Easter is about the Resurrection of Jesus, but it’s also about us as well.

 

That Resurrection is our Resurrection too.

 

What happened to Jesus will happen to us as well.

 

Why?

 

Because God loves us.

 

God loves us just for who and what we are.

 

God loves us, just as God loved Jesus.

 

And just as God raised Jesus up on that first Easter day, God will raise us up as well.

 

No matter who we are.

 

All us, fully loved and fully accepted by our God, will be raised up, just as Jesus is raised today.

 

By doing so, we no longer have to fear things like death.

 

By raising Jesus up, God destroyed our fears of an uncertain future.

 

By raising Jesus up, God brought victory to all of our defeats and failures.

 

See, there is a reason for joy on this Easter morning.

 

In fact, it is joy that dwells with us and among us as we gather here.

 

Joy.

 

So, on this Easter morning, let this joy we feel at this moment not be a fleeting emotion.

 

Rather, let it live in us and grow in us.

 

Let it provoke us and motivate us.

 

Let it flow forth from us.

 

And when you live into this joy—when you let this joy fully consume you—every day with be Easter day to you.

 

Every day will be a day of resurrection.

 

Every day will be a day of renewed life.

 

Alleluia! Christ is risen.

 

The Lord is risen indeed!

 

Alleluia!

 

 

 

 

 

Holy Saturday

 April 16, 2022

 

 

+ We’ve all been here.

 

We’ve been here, in this belly of    hell.

 

We’ve been in this place in which there is nothing.

 

Bleakness.

 

No hope.

 

Or so it seems.

 

It’s not just a bad place to be.

 

It’s the worst place to be.

 

We have been in that place in which we seemed abandoned.

 

Deserted.

 

No one was coming for us, we believed.

 

No one even knew we were here, in these depths of hell.

 

Hell.

 

Holy Saturday is the time in which we commemorate not only the fact that Jesus is lying in the tomb—in which we perform a liturgy that feels acutely like the burial service.

 

We also commemorate a very long belief that on this day, Jesus, although seemingly at rest in the tomb, was actually at work, despite the fact that it seemed he was dead.

 

He was in the depth of hell.

 

 

 

This belief, of course, comes to us from a very basic reading of 1 Peter, and from the early Church Fathers.

 

Jesus descended into hell and preached to those there.  

 

The popular term for this is the Harrowing of Hell.

 

He went to hell and harrowed until it was empty.

 

Whenever I preach about the Harrowing of Hell I always reference the famous icon of Jesus standing over the broken-open tombs pulling out Adam from one tomb and Eve from the other.

 

But there is another image I would like to draw your attention to—a more interactive image.

 

That image is, of course, the image of the labyrinth.

 

One of the many images used in walking the labyrinth is, of course, the Harrowing of Hell. 

 

When you think of the labyrinth, you can almost imagine Jesus trekking his way down to the very bowels of hell.

 

There, he takes those waiting for him and gently and lovingly leads them back through the winding path to heaven. 

 

It’s lovely to imagine and, whether it’s true or not, I like to cling to that image.

 

As a follower of Jesus, I find the story of the Harrowing of Hell to be so compelling.

 

I find it compelling, because I’ve been there.

 

I’ve been to hell.

 

More than once.

 

As we all have.

 

I have known despair.

 

I have known that feeling that I thought I would actually die from bleakness.

 

Or wished I could die.

 

But didn’t.

 

Even death wasn’t, in that moment, the worst thing that could happen.

 

That place of despair was.

 

It’s the worst place to be.

 

Which is why this morning’s liturgy is so important to me.

 

In the depth of hell, even there, when we think there is no one coming for us—just when we’ve finally given up hope, Someone does.

 

Jesus comes to us, there.

 

He comes to us in the depths of our despair, of our personal darkness, of that sense of being undead, and what does he do?

 

He leads us out.

 

I know this is a very unpopular belief for many Christians.

 

Many Christians simply cannot believe it.

 

Hell is eternal, they believe

 

And it should be.

 

If you turn your back on God, then you should be in hell forever and ever, they believe.

 

If you do wrong in life, you should be punished for all eternity, they will argue.

 

I don’t think it’s any surprise to any of you to hear me say that I definitely don’t agree.

 

And my faith speaks loudly to me on this issue.

 

The God I serve, the God I love and believe in, is not a God who would act in such a way.

 

Now, I am not saying there isn’t a hell.

 

There is a hell.

 

As I said, I’ve been there.

 

But if there is some metaphysical hell in the so-called “afterlife,” I believe that, at some point, it will be completely empty.

 

And heaven will be absolutely full.

 

What I do know is that the hell I believe in does exist.

 

And many of us—most of us—have been there at least once.

 

Some of us have been there again and again.

 

Any of us who have suffered from depression, or have lost a loved one, or have doubted our faith, or have thought God is not a God of love—we have all known this hell. 

 

But none of them are eternal hells.

 

I do believe that even those hells will one day come to an end.

 

I do believe that Jesus comes to us, even there, in the depths of those personal hells.

 

I believe that one day, even those hells will be harrowed and emptied, once and for all.

 

Until that day happens, none of us should be too content.

 

None of us should rejoice too loudly.  

 

None of should exult in our own salvation, until salvation is granted to all.

 

If there is an eternal hell and punishment, my salvation is not going to be what I thought it was.  

 

And that is the real point of this day.

 

I love the fact that, no matter where I am, no matter where I put myself, no matter what depths and hells and darknesses I sink myself into, even there Jesus will find me. 

 

And I know that the Jesus I serve and follow will not rest until the last of his lost loved ones is found and brought back.

 

It’s not a popular belief in the Christian Church.

 

And that baffles me.

 

Why isn’t it more popular?

 

Why do we not proclaim a Savior who comes to us in our own hells and bring us out?

 

Why do we not proclaim a God of love who will bring an end, once and for all, to hell? 

 

We as Christians should be pondering these issues.

 

And we should be struggling with them.

 

And we should be seeking God’s knowledge on them.

 

On this very sad, very bleak Holy Saturday morning, I find a great joy in knowing that, as far as we seem to be in this moment from Easter glory, Easter glory is still happening, unseen by us, like a seed slowly blooming in the ground.

 

That Victory of God we celebrate this evening and tomorrow morning and throughout the season of Easter is more glorious than anything we can imagine.

 

And it is more powerful than anything we can even begin to comprehend.

 

In my own personal hells the greatest moment is when I can turn from my darkness toward the light and find consolation in the God who has come to me, even there, in my personal agony.

 

Even there, God in Jesus comes to me and frees me.

 

God has done it before.

 

And I have no doubt God will do it again.  

 

In the bleak waters of abandonment, God has sent the buoy, the lifesaver of Jesus to hold us up and bring us out of the waters.

 

That is what we are celebrating this Holy Saturday morning.

 

That is how we find our joy.

 

Our joy is close at hand, even though it seems gone from us.

 

Our joy is just within reach, even in this moment when it seems buried in the ground and lost.

 

 

Good Friday

 

April 15, 2022

 

 

+ Way back in 2019, when we got our beautiful new altar, when it was consecrated by Bishop Carol Gallagher, part of the consecration rite included pouring chrism over the top of it.

 

Chrism is the specially consecrated oil that is consecrated by a bishop, and is used for anointing.

 

Christ is even more special because it contains nard.

 

Nard is a very fragrant oil that is added to the olive oil of chrism.

 

And nard is also the oil that Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus, anointed the feet of Jesus with just before his crucifixion.

 

Nard is what the body of Jesus would’ve been anointed with when it was placed in the tomb.

 

And nard is used to consecrate an altar, because the altar is a representation of the tomb of Jesus.

 

Our altar here is a representation of the tomb of Jesus.

 

And that smell you smell today is nard, form chrism.

 

Last night, following our Maundy Thursday Mass, after the altar was stripped of its paraments, after it was stripped of the fair linen (which represents the burial shroud of Jesus), I poured chrism once again on the top of the altar and worked it in to the wood.

 

A few months ago, I purchased the beautiful cloth you see in glass before the altar.

 

It is called an epitaphios in the Greek Orthodox Church and a Plaschanitsa (plas-cha-neet-sa) in the Russian Orthodox Church, and in the Eastern Orthodox Church it represents the shroud in which Jesus is wrapped following his death on the cross.

 

As most of you know, I have a very deep love for the Eastern Orthodox Church.

 

I collect ikons and Orthodox religious art.

 

And the Epiptaphois has become one of my prized possessions.

 

And my love for the Eastern Orthodox Church has been especially painful due to the invasion of one Orthodox country—Russia—of another orthodox country—Ukraine.

 

This year the epiptaphios takes on a deeper meaning that past years in light of the war…no, let’s call it by what it really is, the attempted genocide—that is currently happening in Ukraine.

 

In a short while, there will be an opportunity for you to come forward, to venerate the cross of Christ—this cross that my father made that last Good Friday before he died (ironically he died on the Feast of the Holy Cross in 2010).

 

Later you will be invited to come forward for Holy Communion.

 

When you do, you will be able to see the epitaphios in more detail.

 

Look at it.

 

See it for what it represents.

 

In it we see the broken body of Jesus.

 

Pay special attention to the brokenness of Jesus’ body.  

 

The one word is what hangs in the air right now like the smell of nard from the chrism anointed into eh wood of this altar.

 

Brokenness. 

 

In many ways, that is what this day is all about.

 

Brokenness.

 

The Jesus we encounter today is slowly, deliberately being broken.

 

This moment we are experiencing right now is a moment of brokenness.

 

Brokenness, in the shadow of the cross, the nails, the thorns. 

 

Broken by the whips.  

 

Broken under the weight of the Cross.  

 

Broken by his friends, his loved ones.

 

Broken by the thugs and the soldiers and all those who turned away from him and betrayed him.

 

 In this dark moment, our own brokenness seems more profound, more real, as well.  

 

We can feel this brokenness now in a way we never have before.

 

Our brokenness is shown back to us like the reflection in a dark mirror as we look upon that broken Body on the cross.

 

We have all wondered at times in our lives if God, who once was such a source of joy and gladness to us, had turned away from us.

 

We have all known what the anguish of losing someone love feels like, whether we lost that person to death, or to a change of feelings, or simply due to desertion.

 

Some of us have known that fear that comes when we are faced with our mortality in the face of illness, and we think there will never be a time when we will never be well again. 

 

This dark place is a terrible place to be.

 

But as Bishop Charles Stevenson once wrote:

 

“To receive the light, we must accept the darkness. We must go into the tomb of all that haunts us, even the loss of faith itself, to discover a truth older than death.”

 

 Yes, we have known brokenness in our lives.

 

We have known those moments of loss and abandonment.

 

We have known those moments in which we have been betrayed.  

 

We have known those moments when we have lost someone we have cared for so much, either through death or a broken relationship.  

 

We have known those moments of darkness in which we cannot even imagine the light.

 

But, for as followers of Jesus, we know there is light.

 

Even today, we know it is there, just beyond our grasp.  

 

We know that what seems like a bleak, black moment will be replaced by the blinding Light of the Resurrection.  

 

What seems like a moment of unrelenting despair will soon be replaced by an unleashing of unrestrained joy.

This present despair will be turned completely around.

 

This present darkness will be vanquished.

 

This present pain will be replaced with a comfort that brings about peace.

 

This present brokenness will be healed fully and completely, leaving not even a scar.

 

In a short time (though it might not seem like it) our brokenness will be made whole.

 

And will know there is no real defeat, ultimately.  

 

Ultimately there will be victory.

 

Victory over everything we are feeling sadness over at this moment.

 

Victory over the pain, and brokenness, and loss, and death we are commemorating

 

This is what today is about.   

 

This is what our journey in following Jesus brings to us.

 

All we need to do is go where the journey leads us.

 

All we need to do is follow Jesus, yes, even through this broken moment.

 

Because if we do, we will, like him, be raised by God out of this broken place.

 

The God in whom we, like Jesus, trust, will reach out to us, even here, in this place, on this bleak day, and will raise us up.

 

Following Jesus, means following him, even to this place.

 

But, we, who have trusted in him, will soon realize this is, most definitely, not the end of the story.

 

Not by any means.

 

We will, in a short time know, that,  in our following of him, we will know joy—even a joy that, for this moment, seems far off.  

 

I close today with the words from a beautiful hymn that is used on Good Friday in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

 

 

Come, let us see our Life lying in the tomb, that He [Jesus] may give life to those that in their tombs lie dead. Come, let us look today on the Son of Judah as He sleeps, and with the prophet let us cry aloud to Him: You have lain down, You have slept as a lion; who shall awaken You, O King? But of Your own free will  You rise up, who willingly gave Yourself for us. O Lord, glory to You.

Today a tomb holds Him who represents for us the One who holds the creation in the hollow of His hand; a stone covers Him who represents for us the One who covered the heavens with glory. Life sleeps and hell trembles, and Adam is set free from his bonds. Glory to Your dispensation, whereby You have accomplished all things, granting us an eternal Sabbath, Your most holy Resurrection from the dead.

(Hymns of the Ainoi)

Palm Sunday

 April 14, 2019

 

+ I know.

 

I say this to you every Palm Sunday.

 

But I’m going to say it again.  

 

Save your palms.

 

Keep them.

 

Fold them up , display them in your homes.

 

Keep them throughout this year.

 

Let them dry out.

 

Because next February (which I know seems like ages away), I will ask you to bring them back to church.

 

Because these palms that are so young, and green and fresh this morning, in February will be burned and made into the ashes for Ash Wednesday.

 

See, the cycle of our liturgical year.

 

It’s interesting to ponder them in such a way.

 

There is a strange kind of cycle here.

 

These palms represent us, in many ways.

 

In fact, everything that is about to happen this coming week, speaks to us on a very personal level.

 

As we approach this Holy Week, we need to keep in mind a very important reality.

 

What is about to happen in Holy Week is about us, as much as it about Jesus.

 

Now, I’m not talking about this all in some abstract way.

 

I mean it, when I say, this is our story too.

 

Let’s face it: we’ve been here.

 

Our liturgy today—this service we have this morning—begins on a high note.

 

Jesus enters in a hail of praises.

 

The crowds acclaim him.

 

It is a wonderful and glorious moment as Jesus enters Jerusalem, praised by everyone.

 

But everything turns quickly.

 

What begins on a high note, ends on a lowest note possible.

 

The crowds quickly turn against him.

 

He is betrayed, whipped, condemned.

 

And although we hopefully have not physically experienced this things, most of us, have been here at least emotionally.

 

We have known these highs and lows in our own lives.

 

We have known the high notes—those glorious, happy moments that we prayed would never end.

 

And we have known the low notes—when we thought nothing could be worse.

 

And sometimes these highs and lows have happened to us as quickly as they did for Jesus.

 

Unless we make personal what is happening to Jesus in our Gospel reading this morning and throughout this coming week, it remains a story completely removed from our own lives.

 

As we hear this reading, we do relate to Jesus in his suffering and death.

 

How can we not?

 

When we hear this Gospel—this very disturbing reading—how can we not feel what he felt?

 

How can we sit here passively and not react in some way to this violence done to him?

 

How can we sit here and not feel, in some small way, the betrayal, the pain, the suffering?

 

After all, none of us in this church this morning, has been able to get to this point in our lives unscathed in some way.

 

We all carry our own passions—our own crucifixions—with us.

 

We have all known betrayal in our lives as times.

 

We have all known what it feels like to be alone—to feel as though there is no one to comfort us.

 

Whenever we feel these things, we are sharing in the story of Jesus.

 

We are bearing, in our very selves, the very wounds of Jesus—the bruises, the whip marks, the nails. 

 

And when we suffer in any way in this life, and we all have, we have cried out, “where are you, God?”

 

That is what this story of Jesus shows us very clearly.

 

Where is God when we suffer?

 

Where is God when it seems as though everyone has turned from us, and abandoned us?

 

Where is God in our agony?

 

Where is God?

 

The death of Jesus shows us where God is in those moments.

 

Where is God?

 

God is right here, suffering with us in those moments.

 

How do we know this?

 

Because we see it clearly and acutely in this story of Jesus.

 

As I said, the Gospel story we heard this morning is our story.

 

For those of us who carry wounds with us, we are the ones carrying the wounds of Jesus in our bodies and in our souls as well.

 

Every time we hear the story of Jesus’ torture and death and can relate to it, every time we can hear that story and feel what Jesus felt because we too have been maligned, betrayed, insulted, spat upon, then we too are sharing in the story.

 

Every time we are turned away and betrayed, every time we are deceived, and every time we feel real, deep, spiritual pain, we are sharing in Jesus’ passion.

 

When we can feel the wounds we carry around with us begin to bleed again when we hear the story of Jesus’ death, this story becomes our story too.

 

But…and this is very important BUT, there’s something wonderful and incredible about all of this as well.

 

The greatest part about sharing in this story of Jesus is that we get to share in the whole story.

 

Look what awaits us next Sunday.

 

These sufferings we hear about today and in our own lives, are ultimately temporary.

 

But what we celebrate next Sunday is forever—it is unending.

 

Easter morning awaits us all—that day in which we will rise from the ashes of this life—the ashes of Ash Wednesday, the ashes of these palms we wave this morning, and live anew in that unending dawn.

 

Next Sunday reminds us is that, no matter how painful our sufferings have been, no matter how deep our wounds are, God, who has suffered with us, will always raise us from this pain of ours, just as God raised Jesus from his tomb.

 

God will dry all our tears.

 

All our pains will be healed in the glorious light of Easter morning.

 

This is our hope.

 

This is what we are striving toward in case we might forget that fact.

 

Our own Easter morning awaits us, as well.

 

So, as difficult as it might be to hear this morning’s Gospel, as hard as it is to relive our pains and sufferings as we experience the pains and sufferings of Jesus, just remember that in the darkness of Good Friday, the dawn of Easter morning is about to break.

 

With it, the wounds disappear.

 

The pains and the sufferings are forgotten.

 

The tears are dried for good.

 

The grave will lie empty behind us.

 

And before us lies life.

 

Unending, pain-free life.

 

Before us lies a life triumphant and glorious in ways we can only—here and now—just barely begin to comprehend.

 

5 Lent

 

April 3, 2022

 

John 12.1-8

 

+ Occasionally when I get up into this pulpit I like to quote other thinkers and believers and saints.

 

And one of that I quote or reference quite often is one my heroes:

 

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

 

Chardin, as you many remember, was a truly remarkable person.

 

He was a French Jesuit priest, but he was also a scientist. More specifically he was a paleontologist.

 

He was one of the team that discovered the “Peking Man’ 100 years aho.

 

And because he was, and because he knew that’s such things as evolution were a reality, he often was at odds with the Roman Catholic Church.

 

Something many of us here have struggled with a few times in our lives as well.

 

There’s a lot of former Roman Catholics at St. Stephen’s.

 

And Fr. Teilhard would no doubt feel very at home here with us.

 

Well, Teilhard once made a fascinating comment that has meant so much to me in my life.

 

The actual quote comes from his incredible book The Phenomenon of Man:

 

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

 

And I have found that to be true in my own life as well.

 

We are spirits essentially experiencing this very human, very physical, very matter-filled pilgrimage toward God.

 

And we as spirits must deal with all the joys and sorrows, all the beauties and pains of having these physical bodies.

 

I think most Christians think that being a Christian means we only deal with the spiritual aspects of life.

 

But that’s not so.

 

The physical bodies we are given are also very important of our spiritual journey.

 

Even in today’s Gospel, we find Mary doing something that sort of encompasses this view of the sacredness of the body.  

 

We find her coming before Jesus and doing a very unusual thing: she anoints his feet.

 

And Jesus, even more strangely, reprimands jealous Judas by saying that Mary is doing nothing more than anointing his body for burial.

 

As we near Holy Week—that final week of Jesus’ life before the cross—our thoughts are now turning more and more to these “last things.”  

 

Yes, it’s all starting to sound a little morbid.

 

And no doubt, poor Judas was also thinking Jesus was getting weirdly morbid himself.  

 

But, Jesus is reminding us, yet again, that even the simplest acts of devotion have deeper meaning and are meant to put us in mind of what is about to ultimately happen.

 

Mary sees in Jesus something even his disciples don’t.  

 

She sees—and maybe doesn’t fully comprehend, though she certainly intuitively guesses—that Jesus is different, that God is working through Jesus in some very wonderful and unique way.  

 

And she sees that God is working through the very flesh and blood of Jesus.

 

For us, as Christians we do know that issues of the flesh are important.

 

And not in some self-deprecating way, either.

 

You will not hear me preaching much about the “sins of the flesh.”

 

(Don’t think I’m encouraging them either, though)

 

For us, flesh is important in a good way in our understanding of our relationship with God.

 

What we celebrate here every Sunday and Wednesday at the Eucharist is reminder to us how important issues like physical matter are.

 

We worship not only in spirit and in spiritual things.

 

We worship in physical things as well.

 

The altar.

 

The wooden cross.

 

Bread and wine.

 

Candles and bells.

 

Paraments and vestments and icons and stained glass.

 

And, on Wednesdays, incense.

 

These are the things that make us Anglo-Catholics.

 

These things remind us that we have senses, given to us by God.

 

And these senses can be used in our full worship of that God.

 

And that God that we worship is concerned with our matter as well.

 

God accepts our worship with all our senses.

 

God actually gets down in the muck of the matter of our lives.

 

And for us, it also kind of defiant.

 

So many Christians view physical things or the flesh as such a horrible, sinful things.

 

That baffles me.  

 

And as we all know, there are Christians who truly believe that.

 

The flesh is bad.

 

The spirit is good.

 

 

There are Christians who believe that these bodies of ours are sinful and should be treated as wild, uncontrollable things that must be mastered and disciplined and ultimately defeated.

 

Why we as Christians get so caught up with this awful ridiculous view that the flesh is this terrible, sin-filled thing that we are imprisoned within is frustrating for me.

 

In fact, the belief that the flesh is bad and the spirit all-good is a very early church heresy, which was condemned by the early Christian Church.

 

We have all known Christians who do think that flesh is a horrible, sinful thing—who think all we should do is concentrate only with the spiritual.  

 

For those of us in the know—even for those of who have suffered from physical illness and suffering ourselves in this flesh—we know that the flesh and the spirit truly are connected.  

 

20 years ago at this time I was dealing with cancer in my life.

 

It was awful.

 

We cannot separate the two while we are still alive and walking on the earth.

 

Which bring sus back to our good Jesuit Paleontologist friend, Teilhard

 

What are we?

 

We are “spiritual beings having a human experience.”

 

I think we could just as easily say (and Teilhard would wholly agree) that we are spiritual beings having a material experience.  

 

I, of course, don’t see that as a downplaying of our flesh.  

 

Rather, I see it as truly the spirit making the material holy.  

 

Our flesh is sacred because God makes it sacred.  

 

And if we have trouble remembering that our flesh is sacred, that God cares about us not just spiritually but physically, we have no further place to look than what we do here at this altar, in the Eucharist.  

 

Here, God truly does feed our flesh, as well as our spirits.  

 

And, we can even go so far as to say that by feeding our flesh, God becomes one with us physically as well as spiritually.  

 

The Incarnation + (“In the flesh” is what Incarnation means)

 

That is what Holy Communion is all about.

 

A week from Tuesday, of course, we will be celebrating the Requiem Mass for and burying the ashes of someone we will never know.

 

At least not on this side of the veil.

 

These ashes were discarded.

 

No one came to claim them.

 

There they sat for 60 or so years.

 

Whoever survived that person, their lives went on.

 

Now it’s easy to do.

 

It’s easy to just let ashes be ashes.

 

It’s easy to just say, “they’re just ashes.”

 

But for any of us who have lost people we truly love, that is not the case.

 

They’re not “just ashes.”

 

Those ashes are what remains of someone who lived and loved and longed for something more than this world often gives.

 

Those ashes were remains of someone who lived like we did and died like we will die.

 

Those ashes are us, to some extent.

 

Because we are interconnected.

 

We all matter to God.

 

(Geesh, I don’t want to give away my homily for that Requiem Mass).

 

But it is for this reason that we do what we do here at St. Stephen’s.

 

It is for this reason that we inter what others consider “just ashes.”

 

For us, these are not “just ashes.”

 

These are our ashes.

 

Next week, on Palm Sunday, we will begin our liturgy with joy and end it on a solemn note as we head into Holy Week.  

 

Next Sunday, we will also get palms.

 

Now, every year you hear me say: save those palms.

 

First of all, they are blessed palms.

 

We will bless them at the beginning of the Mass.

 

I say fold them, display them, let them dry out.

 

Because next winter, right before Ash Wednesday, I will ask you to bring them back to church.

 

Those green and beautiful palms that we wave next Sunday, will be burned and made into the ashes we use on Ash Wednesday, when we are reminded that we are dust, and to dust we shall return.

 

There is a strange and wonderful circle happening in all of this.

 

We see it all comes around.

 

And that God does really work through all of this in our lives as Christians.

 

Yes, even in the ashes, and matter of our lives.

 

Holy Week is a time for us to be thinking about these last things—yes, our spiritual last things, but also our physical last things as well.   

 

As we make our way through Holy Week, we will see Jesus as he endures pain physically and spiritually, from a spirit so wracked with pain that he sweats blood, to the terror and torment of being tortured, whipped and nailed to a cross.  

 

As we journey through these last days of Lent, let us do so pondering how God has worked through our flesh and the flesh of our loved ones.

 

Yes, we truly are spiritual beings enjoying a physical experience.  

 

We are spiritual beings enjoying an incredible and wonderful pilgrimage through matter.

 

So, enjoy it.

 

Exult in it.

 

Truly partake in this material experience.

 

Let us rejoice in this material experience God has allowed us.

 

Let us be grateful for all the joys we have received through this matter in which we dwell and experience each other.  

 

 And let this joy be the anointment for our flesh as we ponder our own end and the wonderful new beginning that starts with that end.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4 Lent

 

March 27, 2022

Laetare Sunday

Luke 13.1-3,11b-32

+ Today is Laetare Sunday—the rose Sunday of Lent

Laetare is, of course, Latin for “Rejoice.”

And today we get to rejoice a bit.

We’re half-way through Lent.

It’s a little break for us from this kind of heavy season.

Of course, we still are pondering things like sin and repentance.

But Laetare gives us a time also for reflection and rejoicing.

And reflection, as serene as it might seem, can really be difficult too.

I don’t really like doing.

Because, reflection means looking at one’s self.

And, more importantly, seeingone’s self.

Really seeing one’s self.

That can be really hard.

For me, as I said, I do find doing such very difficult.

As I’ve been talking about over the last several months, I’ve been going through this time of spiritual deconstruction in my life.

 A

nd I believe I’ve shared how as liberating as it has been, it has also been very difficult.

 R

ealizing that certain aspects of my spiritual life are simply “fluff,” that certain things that once held so much importance to me are actually now not able to sustain me or hold me is a hard thing to do.

 

I will say that doing so is frustrating to me.

 I

 didn’t think that, at this point in my life, I would be forced to grow even more.

 

Isn’t there an end to growing?

 

Yeah there is. It’s called death.

 

My parents at my age seemed to have it all figured out.

 

They didn’t struggle with things deconstruction in their faith.

 

My spiritual heroes weren’t dealing with these things at this point in their lives.

 

Actually, most of my spiritual heroes were dead by the time they were my age.

 

But the ones who did live to this age were definitely not struggling with aspects of their faith by this point in their life.

 

So, I wonder, why don’t I have it all figured out?

 

Instead, here I am, still growing, still changing, still have to reflect on my changing self.

 

It’s exhausting!

 

There’s something both comforting and disturbing about that realization.

 

As I look back over my life, certainly I find some very solid mile posts.

 

I know this might come as a surprise to most of who know me, but I have been a bit of a rebel in my life.

 

No, not maybe the traditional rebel.

 

But I have rebelled a lot in my life.

 

Look at me, after all.

 

I am a walking-talking, poster child for rebellion!

 

I am a poet. That takes some rebellion in this world.

 

I am an Anglo-Catholic. That’s definitely a kind of rebellion.

 

I am a progressive/liberal/inclusive/Anglo-Catholic PRIEST of all things! That’s all kinds of rebellious right there.

 

And as if that wasn’t enough, I am a vegan, asexual/celibate, teetotaling socialist.

 

All of that that is a rebellion against…well…everything!

 

Now, for some people, that sounds great.

 

For some people it makes them…interesting.

 

Many people think the rebellious life is a romantic one.

 

It’s so full of challenge and adventure.

 

There’s never a boring day in the life of a rebel.

 

I know you’re all so envious of that in my life, right?

 

And all of that is, well, very true.

 

But there’s a downside to being rebellious.

 

What is the downside to being a rebel?

 

There is never a boring day in the life of a rebel!

 

That is one of the downsides.

 

There’s no resting.

 

There’s no day of not being a rebel.

 

You don’t just get to have a day off from it.

 

Up in the morning,--rebel.

 

Before bed at night—rebel.

 

And, let me tell you, as romantic as people might think it is, the fact is: the rebellious life can be a very lonely life.

 

It can be very isolating.

 

Rebels aren’t the only ones who get exhausted.

 

The people around rebels gets exhausted too.

 

Oftentimes, the rebel is all alone in the cause of rebellion.

 

There are days when it feels like one is Don Quixote fighting windmills.

 

And it’s exhausting.

 

As I look back over my life and the choices I have made in this life—and more than the choices—the things I have just realized about myself and who I really am--I realize: I’m tired.

 

It’s been hard at times.

 

And I’m not the same person I was before.

 

Maybe, to some extent, that is why I can relate so well to the story of the Prodigal Son.

 

We have all been down that road of rebellion and found that, sometimes, it is a lonely road, as I said.

 

Sometimes we do find ourselves lying there, hungry and lonely and thinking about what might have been. 

 

But for me, in those lonely moments, I have tried to keep my eye on the goal.

 

I am, after all, one of those people who habitually makes goals for myself. 

 

I always need to set something before me to work toward.

 

Otherwise I feel aimless.

 

Goals are good things, after all. 

 

They’re essentially mile markers for us to set along the way.

 

The reality of goals are, however, that oftentimes—sometimes more often than not, I hate to admit for myself—they are not met sometimes.

 

It was a really growing edge moment in my life when I stopped beating myself up and learned not to be too disappointed in myself when certain goals have not been met in my life.

 

In our Gospel for today, we find the Prodigal Son has some big goals and some pretty major hopes and dreams.

 

First and foremost, he wants what a lot of us in our society want and dream about: money.

 

He also seems a bit bored by his life.

 

He is biting at the bit to get out and see the world—a place many of us who grew up in North Dakota felt at times in our lives.

 

He wants the exact opposite of what he has.

 

The grass is always greener on the other side, he no doubt thinks.

 

And that’s a difficult place to be.

 

He only realizes after he has shucked all of that and has felt real hunger and real loneliness what the ultimate price of that loss is.

 

It’s difficult place to be.

 

But, I’ve been there.

 

Many of us have been there.

 

And it’s important to have been there.

 

God does occasionally lead us down roads that are lonely.

 

God does occasionally lead us down roads that take us far from our loved ones.

 

And sometimes God allows us to travel down roads that lead us even from God (or so it seems at times).

 

But every time we recognize our loneliness and we turn around and find God again, we are welcomed back with open arms, and complete and total love.

 

That, of course, is what most of us get from this parable.

 

But…

There’s another aspect to the story of the prodigal son that is not mentioned in the parable.

 

The prodigal has experienced much in his journey away.

 

And as he turns back and returns to his father’s house, we know one thing: that prodigal son is not the same son he was when we left.

 

The life has returned to is not the same exact life he left.

 

He has returned to his father truly humbled, truly contrite, truly turned around.

 

Truly broken.

 

And that’s the story for us as well.

 

In my life I have had to learn to accept that person I have become—that people humbled and broken by all that life and people and the Church have thrown at me.

 

And I have come to appreciate and respect this changed person I’ve become.

 

That’s the really hard thing to do.

 

Accepting the change in myself is so very difficult.

 

Realizing one day that I am not the same person I was 10 years ago in 2012 or even a year ago is very hard to do.

 

Who am I now?

 

Who is this person I look and reflect upon?

 

I sometimes don’t even recognize myself.

 

God at no point expects us to say the same throughout our lives.

 

Our faith in God should never be the same either.

 

In that spiritual wandering we do sometimes, we can always return to what we knew, but we know that we always come back a little different, a little more mature, a little more grown-up.

 

No matter how old we are.

 

We know that in returning, changed as we might be by life and all that life throws at us, we are always welcomed with open arms by our loving God.

 

We know that we are welcomed by our God with complete and total love.

 

And we know that, lost as we might be sometimes, we will always be found.

 

And in that finding, we are not the only ones rejoicing.

 

God too is rejoicing in our being found.

 

In our being re-constructed.

 

That is the really great aspect of this parable.

 

But, there’s still one other aspect of this story that’s important to remember.

 

It’s the part about the other brother.

 

Because sometimes, we might realize that we were never the prodiga, after all.

 

We were the good and faithful child in this story.

 

This was recently driven home to me.

 

Now, as most of you know, I received a calling to be a priest when I was 13 years old.

 

I was a 13-year-old Lutheran boy who suddenly, out of the blue, started telling people I wanted to be a Catholic priest.

 

It was unusual to say the least.

 

And back then—in the 1980s—it was even more unusual.

 

In junior high and high school, this did not make me a popular person by any sense of the world.

 

After all, back in those days, the majority of people who went to my junior high and high school were, like I was, Lutheran.

 

I always joke when someone says they went to a Lutheran high school like Oak Grove that I did too. It was called West Fargo High School.

 

But back then, proclaiming one’s faith, saying you wanted to be a priest, not dating, not going to dances, not being interested romantically in other people made you an object of ridicule.

 

And, in high school, there was one girl in particular who was kind of mean about it all.

 

She actually went out of her way to be mean and spiteful and make fun of me for my faith, for wanting to be a priest, for not being interested in the things other teenage kids were interested in like dating and dances and things.

 

For years, whenever I would think about her, I would kind of curl up my nose.

 

She was the face of all those people I rebelled against to a large extent.

 

But, to be clear, it hurt to be mocked for something I held so dear.

 

It hurt to be made fun of for my faith.

 

Well…one day when I was Facebook, I happened to see that this person was a mutual friend of one of my Facebook friends.

 

Even though I didn’t really want to do it, I decided to troll her page, just to see what happened to her and her life.

 

Well, the first thing that came up was her profile photo.

 

It showed a much older woman—a woman who has kids and grandkids.

 

Definitely not the preppy, vain teenage girl she was 35 years ago.

 

But the banner on her Facebook profile photo proudly proclaimed under her face:

 

JESUS LOVES YOU

 

Geesh, even I don’t post things like that on my page (maybe subconsciously because of the ridicule I received from people like her all those years ago).

 

Now, you would think I would’ve been happy about her faith in Christ.

 

But…I wasn’t.

 

My first reaction to that banner was:

 

What??? Seriously??? You’ve got to be kidding.

 

This person, who was the very face of my persecution for all these years, is now a born-again person proclaiming that Jesus loves us.

 

The very FACE I associated with criticizing my faith was name framed with the words JESUS LOVES YOU.

 

Like the good son in our Gospel reading for today, I fumed about it.

 

I said, “NOW she’s a Christian! Now she proclaims her faith, while I always felt like putting a bushel over my flame because of people like her. I have always been follower of Jesus, even back then. And now she comes along and gets to claim being a Christian after being so terrible about it back then? This is insane.”

 

But then, Jesus, as he often does, like the father in our Gospel story today, scolded me in that way he does.

 

He said (not literally mind you): “Seriously??? You’re upset about this? That’s the wrong reaction.”

 

Then came those words,  

 

“You are always with me, and all that is mine if yours. But we have to celebrate and rejoice because this loved one was lost and has been found.”

 

I realized that Jesus rejoiced in her just as Jesus rejoiced in me.

 

And that I should celebrate that, not complain about it and rage against it and lament about how unfair it was.

 

So, yes, de-construction is good.

 

But it’s ultimately pointless if there’s no re-construction.

 

It is all pointless if we don’t realize that.

 

God rejoices in us.

 

All of us.

 

God rejoices in embracing us and drawing us close.

 

So, let us this day rejoice in who we are, even if we might not fully recognize who we are.

 

Let us rejoice in our rebelliousness and in our turning back to what we rebelled against.

 

Let us rejoice in our de-construction and in our re-construction.

 

Let us rejoice in our being lost and in our being found.

 

Let us rejoice especially in the fact that no matter how lonely we might be in our wanderings, in the end, we are always, without fail, embraced with an embrace that will never end. 

 

And let us rejoice in our God who embraces us and rejoices in us.