Month: April 2020

4/26/20

(Acts 2:14a, 36-41; Ps. 116:1-3, 10-17; 1 Peter 1:17-23; Luke 24:13-35)

            We’re not in the same room, at the same time, you and I, right now; nonetheless, please allow me to say: Grace to you, and peace from God, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

            If those words sound familiar to you, it’s because (with some slight variations) they are the words with which the apostle Paul opens pretty much every one of his letters in the New Testament.  He does this because he’s writing to people who, in their emerging identity as the Christian church, in the Roman Empire of the first century, find themselves living day to day in circumstances that are much different than before they became Christians: circumstances that are unfamiliar; sometimes  hostile. Paul greets them with these words because he wants to remind them all of the truth about God: that God is gracious; and God gives peace: truth which exists regardless of adverse circumstances, and is not affected by them at all.

            Well, we are living now in a time that is unfamiliar: that can feel hostile.  And of course it’s not this way just for Christians.  The covid-19 pandemic threatens us all, everybody in the world (that’s one of the unfamiliar things about it.)  And we know we’re going to get to the other side of it; but we don’t know how long that’s going to take, and we don’t know how differently that other side’s going to look.

            But for us, just as for the people to whom Paul was writing, the truth remains the truth, now and always.  The grace of God, and the peace that comes from God, do not change.  And I want today to offer a couple of examples of something which, as Christians, we might keep in mind as we navigate our way through these choppy seas.

The name C.S. Lewis is probably less familiar to most people today than it used to be, but for several generations in the middle years of the twentieth century, Lewis was certainly the best-known Christian writer in the English-speaking world.  He wrote books about many aspects of Christian faith, one of which was called Surprised by Joy.  It’s the story of his own conversion to Christian faith, a process which took place over the course of several years.  Lewis had been a confirmed atheist; he was a professor of medieval literature at Oxford University, and a very methodical, logical thinker (which probably had a lot to do with why it took him so long.)

            The book is 238 pages long, and describes step by step his strenuous wrestling with religious belief, and with the whole idea of the existence of God.  It’s about three-fourths of the way through that struggle – about page 200 –  that Lewis arrives at belief in God.  But it’s not until page 237 – the very next to last – that he comes to Christian faith; and he describes this final conversion in all of two sentences.  Some friends had proposed an outing to a famous old zoo, about an hour from Oxford, called Whipsnade; and here’s what Lewis says of that trip: “I was driven to Whipsnade one sunny morning.  When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did.”

            He gives no further explanation of his conversion: nothing about anything he suddenly came to understand, no specific connection that suddenly became clear to him.  Instead of anything like that, he says: “It was more like when a man, after long sleep, still lying motionless in bed, becomes aware that he is now awake.” And he remained awake –ever increasingly – for the rest of his life.

            In truth, finally, there’s nothing that we can really say in logical explanation of why we believe in Jesus Christ.  Because, in faith, we proclaim that we are standing in the presence of the eternal God, the Creator of the universe, and finally all we can say is (with the psalmist): “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them…?” (Ps. 8:4)  And in Christian faith, we proclaim that is the loving presence of that same God among us; and we behold the risen Christ and, with the disciple Thomas, we can say, “My Lord, and my God!”  MyLord.  MyGod.  The one who stands right next to me in this life – whatever the circumstances – and helps me find the way.

             When I call myself a Christian, I’m usually aware of a slight discomfort. Because I know it would be more accurate to say that I try to be a Christian; or that I’m in the perpetual process of becoming a Christian.  Because being a Christian means following a way.  It’s not static, it’s active.  We Christians follow the way of Jesus Christ, the way that leads to what Jesus called the kingdom of God.  In this world God is always trying to draw us closer, to bring us home (that’s why we call it redemption.)  Love wants to happen, in this world.  It’s what we’re born out of, and, as Christians, that’s the way we’re on, to live into.

            We see it in today’s gospel story from Luke, the resurrection story which happens as the two disciples are on the road – on the way – to Emmaus.  They meet Jesus, but don’t recognize him.  He stays with them, walking along, explaining the scriptures, talking about how God is alive in the world.  And they still don’t recognize him, but the Spirit is growing in them as he speaks. They ask him to stay where they’re sheltering the night.  And only when he breaks the bread with them at supper do they see that it’s Jesus, and just as instantly he disappears.

What strikes me about this story – today – is that, at the critical moment – when they suddenly recognize Jesus, and then just as suddenly he vanishes right before their eyes – they don’t remark at all on this utterly mind-boggling one-and-only-time-in-the-world physical circumstances.  They just know that it happened; that it was the truth; and that they both saw it.  And right then they turn around and go back to Jerusalem, which they had fled. Because the risen Christ has just shown them that that’s where the kingdom of God is happening, right then. They’ve seen a new level of truth, and they need to share it.  That’s the way they’re on.

And that’s the way we’re on.  Our world today may be way up there on the unfamiliarity scale, high on the anxiety-meter.  But the message we carry – that the kingdom of God is within us and among us, now and forever – that message is the same, now and forever.  And we carry it in how we live, loving our neighbors as ourselves. That’s the way we’re on.  And that will never change.  Thanks be to God.

4/19/20

(Acts 2:14a, 22-32; Ps. 16; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31)

            One day some years ago I got a call from New Milford Hospital.  There was a man in the Intensive Care Unit there who was dying, and his son and daughter, who were there with him, had requested that an Episcopal priest come and offer prayers.  So I went to the hospital, up to the ICU, met the man’s children – they were both in their forties – and spoke briefly with them about their father; then we all gowned and gloved up and went into his room.  He was on a respirator, not conscious, and obviously in great distress. So I prayed over him – we were in there for about five minutes – and the three of us went back out in the hall. And as we were taking off the safety clothing and talking, a doctor, walking past, looked at the two of them and said, Boy, you guys are really covering your bets, aren’t you?  On my way out I learned from a nurse that I was the fourth clergyperson, all of different denominations, that they had called in that day to pray for their father (and I don’t know that I was the last.) Apparently the operating principle was the same as in hockey or soccer: the more shots you take on goal, the better your chance of scoring.

            And I remember feeling, at the time, not irritation that my time had been wasted (I didn’t, and don’t, think it was), but rather sorry for those two people: that their misunderstanding of prayer, and of what Christian faith has to say about death and dying, denied them true comfort about their father, and about God’s presence in their own lives.  

Death is the starkest reality we face in life, and there’s no sugarcoating it, and no doing away with the pain that surrounds it.  But as Christians, we face death – our own and everybody else’s – in the light of the resurrection.  In Christian faith we know that death is not the last word.  We know that true life is eternal.  And that knowledge means, among other things, that we can live this life differently.  We can live in hope: a state of being which has practical effect on our real lives.

            I’m thinking about all this for two reasons. One is obviously the coronavirus pandemic: the death it’s causing all around the world, and the huge changes it’s caused in all our lives.

            But the other is that this is the second Sunday of Easter, and that we are now in the season of Easter, a time when our church directs our attention to the resurrection, and to the awareness that as Christians we are to live as resurrected people.

            We see something of what that means – the difference it makes – in the life of St. Thomas, in the well-known story we heard today from the gospel of John.  Thomas has not himself seen the risen Jesus, as the other disciples tell him they have. But he refuses to believe them, which is not hard to understand.  Thomas remains determinedly, insistently bound to the reality of this world: Unless I see his wounds with my own eyes, until I can put my hands on them, I will not believe.

            And then Jesus presents himself before Thomas and invites him to do just what he said.  And in his response – he makes no move to touch Jesus, but says simply,“My Lord and my God!” – we see the change in him: the glorious realization of the real presence of God in his life, flooding in at that moment.  And we have some idea of how this changed his life and the lives of people around him: one Christian tradition has it that Thomas went on to evangelize, and be martyred, in India, which would have made him probably the farthest-traveled of all the apostles. 

            So what does all this have to do with us, now?

            Listen again to what Jesus says to Thomas right after his Eureka-moment: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”  Jesus is talking about us: all of us, who weren’t there, then, to see the risen Christ: all of us, down through the centuries; and he calls us, “blessed”.

            Now.  “Blessed” is the translation we use of the Greek word makarios, which mostly means “happy”, but with a strong overtone of “lucky”.  Calling someone blessed is to declare that that person has received a great gift of God, which that person did nothing to earn.  And as it’s used in the Bible, that declaration looks to the future; a future that takes place in the kingdom of God: that is, in this life and beyond, where what God intends, wants us to have, is what happens. Blessed are the meek – the gentle – for they will inherit the earth.   At the Annunciation, Mary says, All  generations will call me blessed: because she will bear a child of the Holy Spirit, and she will mother that child into a life that will change the world forever.

            And the one who has not seen the risen Christ, yet has come to believe is blessed – we are blessed – because in the raising of Jesus Christ God has shown us something about God’s true nature: that the almighty and eternal God, the Creator of the universe, loves each one of us as God’s own child, and will never let go of us, for all eternity.

            All this has to do with much more than how we think about death.  We know that, as we live as resurrected people – as we try day to day to live in the love of God in Christ – what we do ripples out in ways we don’t see – cannot see – far beyond our particular time and place.  In the power of the resurrection, we meet every day – whatever it might bring – in hope, which spreads God’s love over the whole world. Thanks be to God.

4/12/20

             For some years now, on Tuesday in Holy Week, our bishops have invited the clergy of the ECCT to join them at the cathedral in Hartford for the renewal of our ordination vows.  We do a form of the liturgy for ordination, and then there’s a program of some sort, and then we share a meal, and spend some time together.  Five or six years ago the program was to go out into the neighborhood around the cathedral for a couple of hours and look for where we could see Jesus.

            So: how do we see Jesus?  Where can we see Jesus?  What does that mean?

            There were a number of specific places where people congregated which we were directed to, like the public library, and Hartford Hospital.  The one I chose was the big common room in the basement of the cathedral parish building, which they open during the week to people on the street, giving them a place where they can come and be warm for a few hours in the middle of the day, have a cup of coffee, and hang out in a safe and friendly environment.  

That day there were around thirty people there; I joined a couple of guys sitting at a table playing dominoes, who taught me how to play. And at one point, there was a man who was making his way around the room, stopping at different tables for a few minutes.  When he got to us, it became apparent that he needed help; but he had some kind of cognitive difficulty, and a speech impediment, so it took him a few minutes to make himself understood: he needed to get home, which was somewhere in the city, and he didn’t have any money.  And when that finally became clear, before I could reach for my wallet, both of the guys I was sitting with, at the same time, reached into their pockets and said, No, man, I got a bus pass, you want a bus pass?

            That bus pass was something each of them needed, I was quite sure, but they were each offering theirs to a complete stranger who they could see needed help.  That’s the self-sacrificial love of God in Christ.  That’s where I saw Jesus that day.

            Today we proclaim that Christ is alive.  Today is the greatest, most joyful day of our Christian year: even in conditions like the ones we’re living in now.  Which are not unlike those of the church – the followers of Jesus – on the day of the resurrection, 2000 years ago.  That church was dispersed, as we are now: blown apart by a terrible calamity.  Its heart and soul – the source of its life – had been destroyed.  Their friend, their teacher, the person who’d said and done things no one had ever seen before, things that seemed undeniably to come straight from God: that person was now gone for good, executed like the scum of the earth.  So there was fear, and anxiety; as there is today.  They didn’t know who they were any more.  We thought God was right here with us.  What could God possibly be doing?  Was any of it real?

Today’s gospel story from Matthew shows they’re about to find out that it was real; in fact, more real than any of them had imagined.  The angel tells the two women at the tomb, “I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified.  He is not here; for he has been raised….”  He’s telling them, Do not look for Jesus among the dead; because he is not dead.  He has been raised.

“Raised.”  Let’s think about that for a minute.  The risen Jesus is not alive again in the same way that he was before, ready to resume his earthly ministry, God having performed a magic act to confound Jesus’ enemies.   No. God has raised Jesus: raised him to a higher, an infinitely greater, realm of life: life which is in this world here with us.  When we talk about the risen Jesus that’s what we’re talking about.  And that life is not just as real as Jesus’ life before; it’s more so: because it’s the life that’s eternal.

The angel tells the two women to go to the disciples and say that Jesus has been raised, and gone ahead of them to Galilee; and they will see him there.  Those women then  immediately come face to face with the risen Jesus, and he tells them the same thing: Tell my brothers to go to Galilee, they’ll see me there.

Galilee: it’s is where they all came from, Jesus and the disciples.  Galilee is the sticks: flyover country; a place where you could scratch out a life, but nothing there this world puts much value on.  It’s in the far north, as far away in the nation of Israel as you can get from Jerusalem, from the center of worldly power, the temple,  the headquarters of the Roman Empire: it’s where the money is.

That’s why Jesus wants the disciples to go to Galilee.  He knows that their connection to the kingdom of God, which was through him (as it is for us), has been broken.   He knows they’re frightened, and anxious, and confused, and in despair.  He wants them to get away from the powers of this world – that right now have blinded them to his presence – and go to Galilee; where they will see him.   And they do. They go to Galilee, and they see him: the life that is eternal; is now; and will be forever.

So you see, today is the greatest day, the most joyous day, of the Christian year.  It always will be: whatever the circumstances of the present moment, whatever’s in the headlines.  Because this is the day on which we behold the resurrection: which opens our eyes to see God’s infinite love for us; opens our eyes to see the life that is eternal, which is here now; opens our eyes to see all that great glory, through the One who is our Savior, our teacher, and our friend: the Lord Jesus Christ.  Hallelujah.  Thanks be to God.

4/10/20

            There was a movie that came out in 1980 called “The Long Good Friday”.  It was about British gangsters, and was a wonderful film; but it comes to my mind on this day not because of anything that happens in the film, but simply because of the title.  Our community, our country, and our world are living through a time of fear, and anxiety, and a sense of helplessness, and we can’t see the end of it.  It feels like a long Good Friday.

            Well, it’s not that.  Let’s get our bearings: let’s remember who we are, and what we’re doing here.  The coronavirus pandemic is a terrible affliction on us all, it’s causing massive suffering around the world – especially among the poor and the powerless), and it’s going to last what seems like a long time.  

But it will pass.  And this day – Good Friday – is something else; it’s a day on which, as people of faith, we give our attention to something infinitely greater.   This is the day on which we behold what, for us Christians, is the great mystery of human existence.  Today we behold the one who came to tell us that the kingdom of God – the world that proceeds directly from God’s being, a world of love and peace and joy and justice and hope – today we behold the one who came to tells that that world can be here, now, among us.  Today we behold the one who came here to tell us that and to show us how to live that way: how to open ourselves to God’s kingdom that is right here waiting to happen. Today we behold that one whose life, whose whole being, was dedicated to that purpose; and to doing it purely out of love of God, and love for us.  Today we behold that one whom this world chose to reward for all of that with death on the cross.  Today we stand at the foot of the cross; we behold, and we mourn.  And we mourn that the world does it over and over and over again.

            And when we say that about “the world”, we should be careful not to kid ourselves about something.  I was sorry to miss our regular Palm Sunday this year (I doubt there’s been another Palm Sunday in the last 237 years when there wasn’t a congregation worshipping in this building.)  I was sorry for all the reasons we’re coming to know all too well about how we miss doing church with each other; but I was especially sorry because that particular service contains what for me is one of the single most powerful moments in the church year.  It’s the moment when, in the reading of the passion story, in which a number of us speak individual parts, when Pilate asks the crowd what he should do with Jesus, it’s the entire congregation – clergy included, all of us – who shouts, “Crucify him!”

            It’s so powerful to me because, in that moment, we own the fact that we do it.  Not somebody else – not “they” – it is we who condemn Jesus to death on the cross.  And if that sounds too extreme, if we think we wouldn’t have done that 2000 years ago, we should think again.  We should think of all the times in our lives when the new life of God’s kingdom has been on our threshold, staring us in the face, waiting to be let in, and we’ve either ignored it, or actively shut the door: out of ignorance, or unwillingness to be inconvenienced, or simply because it was new, and unfamiliar, and therefore wrong. Sometimes these moments are big, and sometimes they’re so small they’re barely noticeable: but we all know that, no matter how tiny the seed that God plants, it can grow infinitely, and when we flick it aside, we can’t know what it is we’re condemning to death.

            We stand here, at the foot of the cross, beholding our denial of the living presence of God among us: a denial which, for some unfathomable reason, we cannot help but collude in.  That’s the great mystery that we behold today: we stand here, and we mourn; and we ask for God’s help, not knowing what God could possibly do about it.  Amen.

4/5/20

(Isaiah 50:4-9a; Ps. 31:9-16; Philippians 2:5-11; Matthew 26:14-27:66)

            Palm Sunday is a strange, unique day in the life of the church.   In our worship we go from the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem – from his exaltation as the living, breathing witness of God’s saving power among us – to his crucified, dead body being shut up in a tomb: to utter despair; that exaltation turned into ashes, declared meaningless, a sham.  Today – Palm Sunday – we lift that up as the end of the story.

            In a way, the circumstances in which we find ourselves today – in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic – are uniquely appropriate for the observance of Palm Sunday.  We know we’re going to get through this, but we don’t know how long it’s going to take, and we don’t know how bad it’s going to get, though we certainly know it’s going to get worse.  So there’s fear, and anxiety; and our lives have been turned upside down.

            So how are we called to live as Christians, in this world that we’re in right now?   What does our Christian faith have to say to us in our present context?

             There’s a very powerful word to us in today’s reading from Paul’s letter to the Philippians. This letter was written in circumstances with strong parallels to ours today.  Paul wrote it from jail – sheltering-in-place – awaiting a trial which could sentence him to death.   He was writing to the Christians in Philippi, who as a community of faith were facing strong opposition.  In this letter Paul shows the Philippian church that he and they are in essentially the same situation, and he talks about how, in their Christian faith, they are all to address it.

            That’s why he wrote the letter – what as Christians are we to do in the face of this threat to our lives? – and he returns to that theme throughout; but I think the reading we heard today holds the essence of his answer.  It’s a well-known passage, most of which is actually an early Christian hymn which Paul quotes.  This hymn is kind of a capsule version of the story of Jesus Christ.  It tells us that “he was in the form of God” – was part of God’s very being, from before the creation of the universe -“but emptied himself” and was “born in human likeness”, and “humbled himself” – in his humanity – “and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross. Therefore” – because of that obedience, because of his self-sacrificial love for humanity –“[t]herefore God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every other name….”  With this hymn Paul is reminding the church in Philippi of who Jesus Christ really is: that he came from God, in eternity; was born into this world, and lived as a human obedient to God – which is to say, he stayed true to who he knew he really was – even though that caused him to die on a cross; and he returned to God in eternity, as the one whom we proclaim to be our Lord and our God.  

            This the basic foundation of Christian faith, which Paul reminds us of: this is the big picture, which this hymn states, in brief terms.  But the very first verse of today’s reading, before the hymn, are Paul’s own words. And they are his instruction to us regarding what we are to do with what we’re about to hear.  He tells us, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.”  He’s saying, God has made you an essential part of the big picture which I’m now going to remind you of.  Live in this knowledge: you come from God in eternity.  You live in this world as a child of God.  You will return to God.  God’s spirit is what gives you life, throughout  all of that.  Live in the same love that Jesus Christ has for you, and for every one of us. Be true, therefore, to who you really are, wherever your life here takes you.  And be assured that, this world being what it is, at some point that’s going to mean some kind of sacrifice.  But be assured also that that’s not the end of the story.  Because somehow, in the mystery of creation, in that sacrifice is love’s infinite power; and its final victory.

            That’s the mind that was in Christ Jesus. That’s the mind Paul tells us we are to let be in us.  That’s what we are to do, as Christians, in these hard times.  What is the love of God in Christ calling me to do, today? And so, of course, we see that these hard days are no different than any other.  They’re just talking louder.  Amen.