Looking ahead to the Second Sunday in Easter: John 20:19-31

Today’s Gospel reading contains two stories: in the first, Jesus appears to his disciples and in the second, Jesus appears to Thomas.  Several noticeable – even provocative – statements form the scaffolding of these stories, and indicate some important points.

20:19: …for fear of the Jews….  This is an uncomfortable phrase, to the extent that when Scripture is read publicly, “the authorities” are sometimes substituted for “the Jews” to indicate specifically who the disciples were afraid of and why they were afraid of them.  The people gathered in the locked house were reeling from Jesus’ arrest and execution and did not want the same thing to happen to them.  The author of John’s Gospel, however, is drawing a parallel between those disciples and the community to which he writes.  This was a Jewish community increasingly in conflict with mainstream Jewish institutions and Roman authorities in their time.   The important thing to note is not who the disciples were afraid of, but that they were afraid. 

20:19: … ‘Peace be with you.’  This was a conventional Roman greeting, but Jesus’ use of it here and in verse 21 is different.  The second time he says it, the disciples have just recognized him as “Lord.”  The peace which he brings, therefore, is more than conventional.  It is God’s peace, which Jesus had promised to give to all who follow him.  Only God’s peace can drive out the disciples’ fear.

20:27: ‘Do not doubt, but believe.’  Jesus’ exchange with Thomas is popularly interpreted as a story about doubt and belief.  Another way of looking at it is as a story about how we believe.  New Testament scholar Gail R. O’Day notes that the fearful disciples gathered in the locked house were no heroes of faith: they didn’t believe the women’s report about the resurrection, or else they would have been out looking for Jesus!  Instead, he came to them and showed them his physical body.  Thomas missed out on this, and was asking for the same thing that the other disciples had received.  Jesus didn’t chastise him, but offered himself again.  His statement, ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe,’ is a nod to the generations of believers reading the Gospel who were not able, like Thomas, to touch Jesus’ resurrected body. 

20:31: But these are written so you may come to believe ….  For the author of John’s Gospel, the written accounts of Jesus’ resurrection function for us (generations of successive believers) in the way that Jesus’ physical presence functioned for the disciples.  Like Jesus’ body, the Scriptures acknowledge our need for substance, for tangibles to ground and support our faith.  One issue that John’s author was keen to address was Docetism, the belief that Jesus was human only in appearance, and not in reality.  William Temple underlines the importance of John’s overall theme, the Word became flesh, in light of this concern.[1]  Jesus is really present – embodied – in Scripture, in sacraments, and in one another, and these are not crutches that artificially support belief, but are the real substance of faith. 

(Danielle Thompson)

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[1] William Temple, Readings in St. John’s Gospel (Wilton, CT: Morehouse Barlow Co., 1985), 79. 

Sermon preached on Easter Sunday

Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-18

Happy Easter!

My dear friends,

I wish you much joy in the risen Christ this Easter Day. In the words of one of the Easters collects, may we “live with him in the joy of his resurrection” – both in heaven – and may those we love be with him in his joy in heaven – and here, day by day, in this life.

… with him in the joy of his resurrection

I have a favorite book and a favorite sentence from my Lenten reading.

A friend emailed me asking if had I heard of Helen Vendler’s recent book on Emily Dickinson. Not only had I heard of it, in December I got a copy of it at the Seminary Coop Bookstore to have as a sort of stocking gift for Eve and myself for Christmas, and hid it away – and it was still in its hiding place, and it was still tucked in its hiding place when my friend emailed at the beginning of Lent.

If you Google Helen Vendler, you will find at least two good interviews with her about writing this book. In one in the Harvard Gazette she says she started to read Dickinson at age 13, when she had to memorize some of the poems. Although in another interview she notes those were the “bad” old versions, she called them. Dickinson’s family made some rather substantive changes to her work, tidying up – the New England phrase gussying up comes to mind – her punctuation and word choices! But good for Helen Vendler’s teachers for having her memorize. At exactly the same age, my English teacher Vaughn Ketchum made us learn passages of Whittier and Longfellow I still quote. A bit later a French teacher had me memorize La Fontaine. One day in Paris, in the park by the Marmottan Museum, we came across a monument to La Fontaine with a fox and a crow and a piece of cheese – and I started reciting and gathered quite a small crowd …

Maître Corbeau, sur un arbre perché, Tenait en son bec un fromage.

This has been a cold Lent – the Day School is having a supper Wednesday cancelled the night of The Snowstorm – to celebrate helping a school in Haiti. The Websters have spent some evenings in front of the fire. The rectory living room over in the residence building is my favorite room. I had a New England skepticism about a gas fire in the fireplace when we first moved here – it is not like a real fire in New Hampshire – but I have learned an important way it is not like a wood fire is that it is a whole lot easier to deal with. My phobia about leaving a fire burning when we go out or go to bed is quite solved by simply turning the gas off. And we are not living on Cape Cod or New Hampshire with wood stacked outside the door, but in the middle of downtown Chicago and it is a whole lot easier not to have to carry wood in. And our two cats stretch out quite contentedly in front of it.

This Lent I have had some quite lovely peaceful evenings in front of the fire reading. Helen Vendler – she takes a Dickinson poem and then comments on it. I think of Emily Dickinson in her upstairs room in the house in Amherst – the house and room still there (although the furniture from her room is at Harvard) – hard at work, a hard working poet. Her solitude not crankish but intentionally making a place of creativity and indeed hard work and great new beauty. Emily Dickinson was not conventionally religious – not conventional in a lot of ways – but important in the Christian life, in the spiritual life to value poetry and beauty and using the gifts I believe God gives.

And also in front of my fire, reading the latest Henning Mankell mystery (yes, yes, my Swedish pronunciation is not correct). Just before moving here, my spiritual director at the Society of Saint John the Evangelist suggested I read a mystery story while on retreat, along with the Gospel – to relax – and he gave me a Sarah Paretsky to read (complete with a murder in, if I remember correctly -- Winnetka).

My favorite Lenten sentence

My favorite Lenten sentence was in a book I was re-reading, -- good to re-read old friends, for me especially poetry. We intentionally re-read the Bible all the time – fascinating to me how I hear new things, sometimes new meanings and sometimes I say to myself I never heard that before. I believe the Holy Spirit, God living within us, lights up words and phrases and images – I love the Quaker phrase, the Inner Light. So God speaks to us by means of the Scriptures.

And it was reading an old book that I came across my favorite phrase from this Lent – something I have read before but struck me anew. I should preface this favorite quote by saying that for me there are several different meanings of darkness in the Bible.

The most immediately familiar is the contrast of light and dark – very present in John’s Gospel. In our reading from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel this year, Jesus called us to let our light shine before others – I love teaching the kids This little light of mine/I’m going to let it shine.

Reinhold Niebuhr (he and his brother Richard graduates of Elmhurst College) in 1944 wrote his great book The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness which is still important and relevant.

As Easter Christians we are called to bring light to the dark places – “where there is hatred, let us sow love … where there is darkness, light. In Matthew 25 Jesus said when we serve the least – when we feed the hungry or visit the sick or welcome the stranger we serve him. We set the tall Paschal Candle in the church today, symbol of the presence of the risen Christ – may we bring his light.

That is probably the most immediately familiar meaning of darkness, set against the light.

But there is quite another meaning of darkness – a meaning found in today’s Gospel – the beautiful dark and night when we encounter God who we cannot see.

The Easter Gospel

In today’s great Gospel (John 21:1-18), Mary Magdalene came to the garden the first Easter morning, while it was still dark. When she was left alone, weeping, she saw someone she mistook for one of the gardeners working there. It was Jesus – in one of these beautiful appearances the first Easter, given for a very short time (Acts has the Biblical time of forty days). Quite characteristic of these stories that she does not recognize him until he spoke her name, “Mary” – he is the same person, yet – Paul’s great word set to music by Handel – yet changed.

She encounters him in the darkness and night -- we even more for we are not given this visible presence and indeed he tells her plainly not to hold on to that.

“this dark night of living fire”

Sitting in front of the fire at home, I came across this phrase in St. John of the Cross. The poet wrote of

… this dark night of living fire

St. John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul

Translated by E. Allison Peers

Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959, page 136

… esta oscura noche de fuego amoroso

San Juan de la Cruz, Obras Completas

Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 2005, page 549

For that is where we meet God, in the dark and night, for we cannot see God.

God sent Jesus to us, as a human life – a truly human being, truly God but also truly human. So we might see – in a person we could see and remember and listen to and picture -- the glory of God’s love for every human being. For me, for you – not one left out, not one forgotten.

Jesus died and was buried and rose from the dead and is at the heart of God the Trinity, and when God draws near, he draws near.

Risen Jesus, you are God with us.

You invite us to stay close to you in your story – we can listen, meditate, picture, use art, use poetry, use music – hymns and choirs – to bring alive your story. You speak to us by your story, you draw near to us by your story.

You invite us to share your Supper – to take and touch and taste these signs of your presence.

You call us to serve you by serving anyone in any need. Where there is ignorance, to teach and bring learning. Where there is sickness, to bring healing. Where there is loneliness, to be there. When a stranger comes, to welcome.

Woven through all these things we see and hear and touch and do, you meet us in this dark night of living fire. In the Temple within us.

Where we do not see, nor do we hear. But you are there. And call us to trust your presence and love – trust that God loves us with your love, and we accept your love and thank you for it, and return it, in the fire of love you kindle.

Risen Jesus, may we live close to you in the light of Word and Sacrament and in the beautiful night of the presence of God – the night of meeting and being together, of God being with us.

Loving us. Each one. With us. Amen.

(This sermon was preached by the Rev. Raymond Webster, Rector in St. Chrysostom’s Church, Chicago, Illinois on Easter Day, April 24, 2011.)

Looking Forward to Easter Sunday: John 20:1-18

Noli me tangere: The Risen Jesus and Mary Magdalene in the garden the first Easter dawn. Fra Angelico, Florence, San Marco

EASTER GOSPEL TEXT: Easter Day (John 20:1-18)

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him." Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him." When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?" Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away." Jesus said to her, "Mary!" She turned and said to him in Hebrew, "Rabbouni!" (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, "Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, `I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'" Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord"; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

The Bible texts of the Gospel lessons are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Church of Christ in the USA, and used by permission.

COMMENTARY by the Rev. Raymond Webster

These comments on the Easter Gospel above are from my Easter Sermon in 2010. I want to wish you a very happy Easter.

On Easter Day we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. On a day in our history, Jesus died on the cross, in love for us. He was buried and on the third day rose. The heart of the Christian faith and hope is that when we die, when those we love die, we will be with him in the new life in heaven.

With him. I have printed above, as something of an Easter present, a photo of the fresco of the today’s Easter Gospel, painted in the 1400s by Fra Angelico, in Florence, Italy. Fra or Brother Angelico was a Dominican friar. This is one of an extraordinary series of frescoes of scenes of the story of Jesus he painted in a Dominican monastery of San Marco in Florence. The last time we were there my wife Eve told me, that the building just next to San Marco was the main building of the University of Florence when she was a student there.

Fra Angelico shows the scene where Mary Magdalene has come to the garden, and encounters the risen Jesus. It was just before dawn, and in the dark she thought he was one of the gardeners in the place, so Fra Angelico painted Jesus holding a gardener’s hoe.

Fra Angelico painted the original in the room of one of his brother friars. The original is big, my memory is life size. Fra Angelico painted a fresco in each of the monks rooms.

In the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew Jesus told us that when we pray we are to go into our own room and shut the door. Paul said that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. We go into our room, we go within ourselves to the place inside where we think and feel and hope and fear and know and wonder – and there God gives us the stories of Jesus to remember and listen to and picture.

Our Easter Gospel is this story Fra Angelico has pictured.

While it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the place where they had buried Jesus. She had been there when they took him down from the cross, and the mother held him in her arms for a time, and then they brought him here to this garden and buried him.

That first Easter morning, in today’s story, when someone was there in the dark she thought it was one of the gardeners, and she spoke to him. And then she heard him speak her name, perfectly simply -- Mary.

And she recognized him. It was Jesus. And she said in recognition, “Rabbi.” “Teacher.”

Then he said to her what is often the title in Latin of paintings of this scene, Noli me tangere, don’t hold on to me, do not hold on to this risen visible presence, given for a short while so you and the others might know what has happened, that he has been raised from the dead, that God who was with you in him is with you again in him. Truly with you. Present.

Jesus would not remain visibly present. He would ascend to the Father – to the heart of God, where God is. Beyond us, other (and so the imagery of up) and also – and also, deep in the tradition of the Hebrew Bible, out of the theology of God’s presence in the Hebrew Bible – also with us. Unseen. Present.

We listen for his voice in the stories of what he said and what he did. .

We take the bread and wine as signs of God’s presence with us in him, in his love.

And he is with us, to offer forgiveness, friendship, purpose, calling, vocation – God calls each one to follow him as his disciple. His last words in Matthew, the Gospel of the Sermon on the Mount, are his Great Commission to go into all the world and make disciples of everybody. Our mission of empowering and enabling and teaching.

And at the heart of it all, he who is risen and living at the heart of God is with us to love with us with the love we see in his story, in his cross – the living love given to us and if we accept it and trust it and live in it, we forget self and love with something of his love and die to self and come into his new life.

Mary Magdalene left the garden and went and told the others she had seen the Lord – the first witness to the resurrection, the first preacher of the gospel good news of Easter.

A happy and blessed Easter in the love of Christ!

(These comments are based on a sermon preached by the Rev. Raymond Webster on Easter Day, April 4, 2010 in St. Chrysostom’s Church, Chicago.)

Sermon preached on The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday

Liturgy of the Palms: Matthew 21:1-11; At the Eucharist: Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-16; Philippians 2:5-11; Matthew 27:11-54

If you happened to jog through Lincoln Park earlier in the week, you would have seen something a little out-of-the-ordinary – or out of time, at least.  Canons erupting, men in porkpie hats, women in hoop skirts?  In April, 150 years ago, the American Civil War began, so right behind the Chicago History Museum up here, and all over the country, groups of re-enactors got together to pitch tents, drink chicory coffee, and, most importantly, to stage mock battles.  You might wonder why anybody would do this – why people would spend their free time dressing up in old-fashioned clothing, eating hard-tack, and reliving an unhappy and tragic event, like a battle.  Well, the Tribune reported the words of one re-enactor, who insisted that we, as a country, “have lost sight of what the Civil War was all about … great honor, courage, bravery ….”  He and his friends re-enact because, again, in his words, “[The Civil War is] a part of American history and we have to keep that alive.” 

The re-enactors kind of gave me a jolt this week, not because they were discharging firearms, but because their actions and ours seem to eerily coincide.  More than any other time in the year, Holy Week is when we re-enact, explicitly, the days leading up to Jesus’ death.  And if you want drama, forget Gettysburg – today we’ve got the highs of the liturgy of the palms and the lows of the passion narrative.  We’ve got Jesus’ arrest, trial, and crucifixion, and for the next six days we’ll keep replaying all of the things that happened to him in the last week of his life: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and all the way through Thursday when he’ll have one final meal with his friends, and Friday when Jesus will die.  We’ll be there for all it.

We’re in good company, too, with all of this re-enacting.  It’s exactly what Jesus is doing when we see him today, riding into Jerusalem on a little colt.  The tip-off is in the hollers of the crowd as they throw their jackets and some tree branches on the road in front of him.  Hosanna to the Son of David!  Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!  This is a psalm the people are shouting, and it’s not just any old psalm.  It’s Psalm 118, which is the last part of the Hallel, a group of psalms that Jewish people in Jesus’ time and Jewish people to this day say during major festivals like Passover.  Jesus is actually enacting the story that happens in the psalm: a new king arrives at the temple and is greeted by the people inside with eagerness and desire, because they want to be saved.  Their prayers are answered when the king strides through the temple gate, walking in step with Jesus years later as he ambles into town on the back of a donkey. 

It goes even further than this, though.  Jesus has a reason to be in Jerusalem.  He’s there to confront the powers that oppose him, and to preach God’s kingdom.  But something else happens, right?  Passover.  Jesus is in Jerusalem for Passover, to keep the feast, just as he’s always done.  The Last Supper, the final meal with his friends, the thing that we re-enact on Maundy Thursday, is a Passover meal, with Jesus presiding.  And Passover is the great re-enactment of the defining moment in the history of Israel, the passage from bondage to liberation that lies at the center of who God is for the Jewish people.  Jesus and his friends would have spent the night recalling the story of the Exodus, with this intention, quoted from later Passover texts: “In every generation let each person look on himself as if he came forth from Egypt.  It was not only our ancestors that [God] redeemed, but us as well did he redeem along with them.”  So Jesus falls in line with time as he enters Jerusalem; he falls in line with time as he observes Passover – and the preacher Barbara Brown Taylor notes that he falls in line with time as he and his friends sing at the end of their seder meal.  Because they must have sung the same Hallel, the song Jewish people sing at festivals, the song that the crowd shouted at Jesus as he approached the city gates on Palm Sunday. 

So there are layers and layers of memory going on here, especially when you get to us.  You have the Hallel, and Jesus entering into Jerusalem as the king does in the Psalm, as well as Jesus singing the Hallel at the end of the Passover meal.  And you have the Passover itself, the great festival of remembering that Jesus and his friends were commanded to keep, where Jesus told the story of deliverance from slavery right when he was preparing to deliver us from sin, to be our Passover.  Then you have Jesus’ own command, which you’ve heard before, and which you’re going to hear again in six or seven minutes: “do this for the remembrance of me.”  And so not only during Holy Week, but every week we get wrapped up in this repeating circle of events, this repeating cycle of storytelling, these repetitious actions that we believe make a difference for how we live and how we live with God. 

What kind of a difference, though?  How is our re-enacting anything more than following a command?  Or keeping a family tradition, or acknowledging a precedent?  How is what we do different than what the Civil War re-enactors are doing as they try to raise awareness about American History?  Are we just waving palms around in order to get a feel for what a palm was like in the first century?  Are we just bringing the crucifixion to the front of our minds so we can be mentally prepared for Easter? 

The re-enactors may have more to teach us than we think.  Because if you’ve ever known a Civil War re-enactor, you know that the guy I quoted from the Tribune wasn’t telling the whole truth.  Sure, they want to preserve battlefields and build historical consciousness.  But that’s not why you camp out in costume in a city park.  You camp out in costume because you want to be there.  Meaning, you want to be living in April, 1861, if only for a day.  You want to physically participate in something you otherwise have no access to.  Civil War re-enactors have a Passion for something that didn’t happen to them.  But we have a Passion for something that did happen to us, and that keeps happening to us.  In Jesus, as participants – as sharers – in his body, we passed through the sea; in Jesus we ride into the city while the people who would later kill us sing our praises; we keep the feast of bread and wine where the whole history of God’s creation is prayed out loud, again and again; and in Jesus we suffer, and we die … and then we discover that something else is more powerful than suffering.  Something is more powerful than death.  Just under the surface of everything, just waiting to overtake everything in any given instance is the power of resurrection, the power of new life that is Easter’s answer to Holy Week.  The power of new life that is God’s answer to everything that wants to kill us.  The defining moment in our ongoing history, that we re-enact again and again and again, just by being alive is this: resurrection, resurrection, resurrection – year after year after year, minute after minute, after minute. 

This week, as we re-enact the events leading up to Jesus’ death, as we actively remember the highs and lows of his last week in Jerusalem, we’ll find ourselves falling in line with time in a way we don’t usually experience.  What you’ll be participating in is Jesus’ own life; what you stand to discover is your own life; and the thing that’s yours to claim, is new life: the power of God living in you, now and always.    

Sermon preached by the Reverend Danielle Thompson on Sunday, April 17 at St. Chrysostom's Episcopal Church in Chicago, IL at 8:00 AM and 11:00 AM.

Looking ahead to the Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday (Matthew 21:1-11 and Matthew 26:14 - 27:66)

Long-ish Palm Sunday Rant

A stunning confession: I have mixed feelings about the Palm Sunday liturgy.  Remember how it goes?  We start with the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem on a “colt” (a little male donkey) in a sort of ‘mini-liturgy’ before we shake our palms around.  After that, we have a regular worship service where the story of Jesus’ arrest, trial, and crucifixion is read.  For a long time, I never really thought about how this day is structured.  I grew up in a church that didn’t keep Holy Week, so when I began attending the Episcopal Church several years ago, the liturgy of the Palms and the reading of the Passion story was just something else to learn about.  It did occur to me to be a little confused –  yay, we’re happy!  No, wait … we’re sad! – but I just figured that this prayer book that I was growing to love knew better than I did, and I went along for the ride. 

But every year, I still felt a little off on the Sunday before Easter.  I wanted to spend the week walking through those final, climatic days of Jesus’ life as they happened, but it seemed like we were cramming Palm Sunday and Good Friday all together in one service!  After I began to study worship, I came to this observance with a suspicious eye, expecting to find that it hadn’t always been done this way.  Perhaps a medieval accretion?  A modern innovation?  No such luck.  One of the earliest accounts of Palm Sunday is from the fourth century when a woman named Egeria traveled to Jerusalem to observe the rites of Holy Week and wrote about it in a letter to her friends (side note: the rites of Holy Week are some of the first observances to really take hold in the early church – and Egeria is good reading for all of it!).  Egeria’s group spent most of the day gathering together at suitable places in and around Jerusalem, singing songs and reading lessons.  At 5:00 PM, they heard the story of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem while stationed on the Mount of Olives, then processed into the city waving tree branches and singing Psalm 118 (which we read as part of the Liturgy of the Palms).  Marion Hatchett, who wrote a huge scholarly commentary on our Book of Common Prayer, says about this procession, “[it] moved slowly because it included elderly people and people carrying babies ….”[1]

Very palm-centric, right?  Not so fast!  The procession continued to the site of Jesus’ tomb, where a service of Evening Prayer was held, and ended at the site of the cross, where a special prayer was said before the people were dismissed.  The Sarum Use, a medieval English form for worship after which a great deal of the first Prayer Book was patterned, has a complicated liturgy involving both the triumphant entry and the crucifixion.  Some Protestant reformers eliminated the blessing of the palms and the procession, so their worship centered around the arrest, trial, and crucifixion narrative.  Even so, the triumphant entry worked its way back into the day, so that back when Anglicans used to say Morning Prayer first, followed by the Eucharist, they would hear the happy story during the office and the sad story during the mass.  Palms and Passion, together forever. 

This past week, dispensing with all propriety, I complained in my best teenagery way to some other clergy about how jam-packed and confusing I think Palm Sunday is.  Turns out my opinion is totally en vogue: to a person the small group of priests I spoke with took issue with the Palm Sunday service, and a few of them had amended theirs to primarily reflect the triumphant entry.  Some churches had really beefed up their processions, too, with big frondy palms and outdoor gatherings.  I began to imagine that simplified, botanically powerful worship was possible!

Filled with self-righteousness and new ideas, I got home from the colleague group and picked up my copy of Hatchett, expecting to find somewhere in his historical account a crotchety complaint about the Sunday before Easter that would align with mine.  Sure enough, there it was – but not as I had anticipated.  Remember how the triumphant entry made its way back into the service in the English Church by being read at Morning Prayer (which, again, was followed by a service of Holy Eucharist that included the Passion reading)?  Well, even though people were supposed to go to Morning Prayer and stay for Eucharist, that didn’t always happen (either they went to just one service, or only one service was offered).  As a result, they would have heard only the story about the palms or the story about the passion.  Hatchett, describing this, writes,

…the contrast between the king joyously greeted by the crowd and the king reigning from a tree, condemned to death by the crowd, and the contrast between the shouts of “Hosanna” which greeted our Lord at his entry into Jerusalem and the cries of “crucify” later in the week – the particular contrasts which give the day its pathos and power – were lost to the worshippers.[2]

Well played, Professor Hatchett.  The Sunday before Easter is a study in contrasts.  And it’s not chronologically satisfying, but worship isn’t really about chronological timelines, after all.  In a way, worship is about obliterating time.  Not in the sense of doing away with history, or transcending human categories or that sort of thing.  Worship is about bringing a sense of the eternal – the timeless – into history, which allows us to hold contrasting events together.  And maybe there’s a creative tension, a spiritual tension even, that’s lost when we don’t do this. 

On the other hand, I really do think that in a world where text, information, and memory are thrown at us all day, every day (this blog being Exhibit A), there’s something to be said for streamlining things.  There’s some virtue in focusing on one event and one emotion, and doing it so well that people are drawn into the whole week of observances and arrive at Good Friday with a sense of terrible wonder and expectation, not yet having passed through that moment. 

So there it is.  My (and some other people’s, it seems) Palm Sunday ambivalence.  The choice is between the potential virtues of a radical tone change within one liturgy, or the potential virtues of a straightforward celebration of and identification with Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem.  This is a late blog entry, posted on the Saturday before Palm Sunday, but if you read it today or during the upcoming week, email me at the church or stop me on Sunday and let me know what you think.  Actually, let me know if you’ve ever thought about it.  Let's muddle through this one a little bit. 

(Danielle Thompson)

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[1] Marion Hatchett, Commentary on the American Prayer Book (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 223. 

[2] Ibid., 225. 

Sermon Preached on the Fifth Sunday in Lent

I am the resurrection and the life ...

Ezekiel 37: 1-14; Psalm 130; Romans 8:6-11; John 11:1-45

I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord;
he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live;
and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.
(Book of Common Prayer, page 469)

These words of Jesus are a direct quotation from today’s Gospel (John 11:1-45) and open every Episcopal burial service – every burial service from the Book of Common Prayer. Every one I have officiated at over forty years:

When I was first ordained, a curate in suburban Boston. And then when I was rector of parish on the edge of urban Boston – the other night something brought back to me a tragic incident, when a parishioner was badly burned in a fire, and the long vigil over a week with her at Boston City Hospital, where they took wonderful care of her in the burn unit and then I read the words opening her funeral. As I would read them in the center of Manhattan, then on Cape Cod, and since 1993 here.

I am the resurrection and the life -- woven through those years of ministry are these words of Jesus – sometimes said with one or two people present in the church or at the graveside. Once in New York City with three people present, my wife and (then little) boy and the parish secretary who had been the three people present at the person’s baptism. Sometimes in a church filled with people, the church so full people standing in the doorways, as I read the words coming down the aisle before the casket.

The words are exactly the same, the words sung by the choir of Westminster Abbey as a princess was brought into the church, the whole world watching on TV -- I am the resurrection and the life -- the intent exactly the same, to speak the word of the resurrection.

And whatever we have or have not done, in St. Chrysostom’s Chicago, we have faithfully done just that: spoken the word of resurrection: the core belief of Christianity that on a day in our human history Jesus died and was buried and on the third day rose. Our hope is that when we die, when those we love die, we will be raised to the new life in him.

So on the Fifth Sunday of Lent, on the threshold of Holy Week which begins next Sunday, Palm Sunday, we find ourselves celebrating the great central message of Easter. What gives? What’s going on? Well, every Sunday is a feast of the resurrection of Jesus.

And we come to Holy Week remembering that the passion and death of our Lord is the self-giving in love of one who is risen from the dead and present with us -- I believe – present in word and sacrament. It is why I love having Holy Communion amid the deep solemnity of Good Friday – for it is the day we remember the self giving love of the one who lives at the heart of God and is present with us at God‘s heart. The one who is God with us, Emanu El, God here, with us, loving us. Whatever happens.

I mentioned that story when I was a rector, the first time, on the edge of urban Boston, and had a long vigil driving to Boston City Hospital to visit a very badly hurt parishioner. I do not remember the exact year, but I was around twenty seven. It was my first experience with a severely burned person. I have great admiration for doctors and nurses who care for them. What brought this to mind last week was the visit of an old friend who is just such a doctor.

All those years ago, I had been trained to visit in the hospital, the program for seminarians at Massachusetts General Hospital. I did go, faithfully. I remember the great kindness of the nurses to this young priest, explaining what was happening. It was deeply jarring. One learns how to deal with that, it is part of the spiritual life of a priest, well, part of the spiritual life of any disciple of Jesus.

A winter’s night in St. Stephen’s in the South End

One winter night, after visiting, I dropped into an Episcopal Church not far from Boston City Hospital – St. Stephen’s in the South End. It has had a long ministry in the city – at another location a hundred years ago Bishop Brent was rector when he became Missionary Bishop of the Philippines. The night in the mid 70s I dropped by, something was going on in the parish house, and the door was open and I slipped through and into the church, where it was completely dark, except for lights from outside coming through the high windows – street lights. And the flickering candle by the aumbry, where the bread and wine are kept . However broken life was, God is present, loving in Christ, even if only it seems a small flickering candle flame on a cold winter’s night.

The resurrection of Jesus speaks to our future, our hope we will be with him but also just as much to our here and now, and the promise God is with us. Loving us in him.

Today’s story took place before the first Good Friday and Easter and indeed the opening of the story is directly related to what lay ahead.

A hesitation and a temptation

Because Jesus hesitated. It was a human hesitation. It was not cowardice. I remember being told only a fool is never afraid. Courage is what you do with your fear or apprehension and when there are choices and hesitations. Am I up to it? Can I do it? Can I take it? Very human. Very human to run away. It takes courage not to run away. t to.

The story opens with Jesus getting word that his close friend Lazarus was very sick. Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha lived in Bethany a village, as the story tells us, about two miles from Jerusalem.

If you walked, if you walk today from Bethany to the city, you will soon (two miles) find yourself at the top of the Mount of Olives, looking down to a narrow valley, with the Temple Mount rising on the other side. It was the road Jesus would take on Palm Sunday – a very visible way of coming into Jerusalem.

For Jesus, going to his sick friend meant going to Jerusalem. When Jesus said he was going, his disciples tried to talk him out of it. The same thing is recorded in Matthew, Mark and Luke – that when Jesus said he was going to Jerusalem, the disciples were not happy. It comes up at a different point in the story in Matthew, Mark and Luke (the writer of John characteristically going their own way) but the basic reaction of the disciples was the same in all four. In Mark, it was when Simon Peter spoke up against it, Jesus snapped back, uncharacteristically stern, in the tension of the temptation not to go – “Get behind me, Satan!” (Mark 8:34)

The temptation was there (he was in every way tempted as we are, yet did not sin) – the great temptation was to run away. It still is one of the great temptations.

It was Thomas who spoke up and said, said, Let us also go that we may die with him. Courageous words, although Thomas and the others would run away except for John and the women.

The only one of the men standing beneath the cross was John. The others were gone.

Jesus went to Bethany, to find everyone in mourning. He spoke to Martha and then Mary. In the face of our human experience of loss and sorrow he said the great words, I am the resurrection and the life.

“I am” -- one of his I am statements, one of seven in John’s Gospel – four of the seven in last Sunday’s story and today’s and the Good Shepherd chapter in between – four of the seven – I am always doing percentages, 57%. In the face of our human experience of death he said, I am the resurrection and the life, and calls us, calls you and me, to believe -- which for me is primarily to trust in God’s love. Trust that when we die we will be held in the love and compassion and mercy and forgiveness we see in Jesus of Nazareth in the Gospel stories. That is what heaven is like, it is like him, it is being with him. I am the resurrection and the life,

And then when he went to the tomb he wept. He loved and cared so much.

Then he had them open the tomb and called Lazarus out.

So may the risen Christ one day call each one of us, out of death into life.

(This sermon was preached by the Rev. Raymond Webster, Rector, in St. Chrysostom’s Church, Chicago, Illinois on Sunday, April 10, 2011, the Fifth Sunday in Lent.)

Looking ahead to the Fifth Sunday in Lent: John 11:1-45

Opening scene: Jesus gets word his friend is sick

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, "Lord, he whom you love is ill." But when Jesus heard it, he said, "This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God's glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it." Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

The writer gives us a picture of how much Jesus loved these three, Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha. There is an emphasis on how much he loved them. And there is also a perplexing hesitation. Jesus stays where he is two days longer.

Then after this he said to the disciples, "Let us go to Judea again." The disciples said to him, "Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?"

Bethany was (and is) just down the road from Jerusalem. If you take the road, as Jesus would on the first Palm Sunday, from Bethany, you come to the top of the Mount of Olives. Directly ahead, across a narrow valley, rises the Temple Mount, where at the time of this story the great Temple in Jerusalem stood. Jesus went down the Mount of Olives to enter the city – in the most visible way possible – on Palm Sunday.

Going to Bethany was in effect deciding to go to Jerusalem. There was a hesitation on the part of Jesus. The reaction of the disciples was to try to talk him out of going.

Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them." After saying this, he told them, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him." The disciples said to him, "Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right." Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, "Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him."

Courageous Thomas

I remember many years ago, the Church of Scotland preacher James Stewart (1896-1990) said that Thomas should be called “Courageous Thomas” rather than “Doubting Thomas” because he was the one to speak up to urge them all to go with Jesus, whatever the risks of going near Jerusalem.

Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with him."

Jesus goes to Bethany and talks with Martha

When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him." Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again."

Here is the promise of resurrection.

Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day."

Then Jesus says another of the seven “I am” statements:

Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”

These words are quoted at the beginning of the burial office, the funeral service, in the Book of Common Prayer, and are read at the opening of every funeral in St. Chrysostom’s parish.

“Do you believe this?" She said to him, "Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world."

Jesus died and was buried and on the third day rose, and our central Christian faith and hope is that when we die, or those we love die, we will be raised with him.

This is the center of what the church – of what St. Chrysostom’s, Chicago – has to say to the city and world.

When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, "The Teacher is here and is calling for you." And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see." Jesus began to weep.

A deeply human moment. Even tighter in the King James Version: Jesus wept. As the Nicene Creed emphasizes, Jesus was Son of God, and also human, born of a human mother. He was born and he would die. He ate meals and loved. And faced with the death of a friend, he wept.

So the Jews said, "See how he loved him!" But some of them said, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?"

Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus

Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days."

An extremely earthy real human comment.

Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?" So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, "Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me." When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!"

So may we each hear Jesus one day call us, to come out of death into life with him.

This was the great sign of the resurrection which was coming soon, when Jesus would die on the cross, and be buried, and on the third day rise.

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

Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.

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The Bible text of the Gospel lesson is from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, and used by permission.

Sermon preached on the Fourth Sunday in Lent

1 Samuel 16:1-13; Psalm 23; Ephesians 5:8-14;
John 9:1-41

THE ENCOUNTER OF JESUS AND THE BEGGAR BORN BLIND

by the Rev. Raymond Webster

Choosing David as the new king

Fascinating that the Lectionary has us read as our first lesson today (First Samuel 16:1-13) the story of God choosing David to be the new king, and David’s anointing by the prophet Samuel.

God choosing. I deeply believe that God loves each human being – you. That God loves each human being, each person in Jesus Christ and calls you to follow Jesus as his disciple, day by day. That God calls you to faith – to trust in the love we see in him –and to new life with him in heaven, and also on our way, our journey through life.

In our first reading, God sent Samuel to Jesse, to discern which of Jesse’s sons was the one. The first son was tall and imposing, but the writer notes piously,

… the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.

Six more sons were brought before the prophet. And then the youngest, the shepherd boy David – and the pious admonition was quite forgotten. The writer describes David:

Now he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome.

It is extremely unusual in the Hebrew Bible to have such a vivid personal description. So much for not looking on the outward appearance! I believe the Biblical writers were inspired by God, but they were human. David’s good looks probably were an asset to his political career, but they would get him in a whole lot of other trouble over the years. But all that lay in the future. Here in this story, David was God’s chosen, and Samuel anointed him as king:

Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the presence of his brothers; and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward.

Anointing

The prophets, priests and kings of ancient Israel were anointed, holy oil was poured on them, as a sign they were sent from God to the task given them.

In the Hebrew Bible all Israel looked for the coming of “the Anointed One” – in Greek the “Christ” and in Hebrew the “Messiah” – who would save the people.

Interesting that the Lectionary gives us this story to go with today’s Gospel (John 9:1-41). For Jesus makes mud, and puts it on the eyes of the blind beggar – and then sends him to wash, where he is healed. So the Anointed One anoints someone – characteristically reaching out to someone in trouble and cut off -- and brings healing and sight and light.

So Jesus gives us baptism, where we are washed, and anointed with the Holy Spirit given to us: and the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward.

In the Spirit of the Lord we are to reach out to heal and bring light

And in the Spirit of the Lord we are to reach out to heal and bring light to dark places. In the great city this happens – sometimes best happens – through institutions.

If someone needs to learn, good to have schools, and good to have us provide them.

When someone needs surgery, good to have a hospital.

If you are out of prison and want to start a new life, good to have our charity St. Leonard’s Ministries

If you are out of work, good to have the Employment Council to go to.

If you are a human being, with a deep human need for God – and that is every one of us – every human being – it is good to have the church, a parish – may be a small college chaplaincy, may be a tin roof in the southern highlands of Mexico, but be a great building in a center city, but there will a community, the Eucharist, the Bible, the story of Jesus, the presence of God in the risen Christ.

You can be someone with every advantage in the eyes of the world, and still find yourself in great need, as much as the blind beggar that day. May not be able to see: where to go, what to do, where God is. Important that the church is there – the community is there, the worship is there, the priest is there at hospital bedside to say in Word and Sacrament that God is with you and loves you, even when you cannot see. And to trust that, simple trust, even as small an amount of trust as a mustard seed, there will be the light of faith.

The opening scene

How I love today’s Gospel story. The opening scene is quite simple.

As he walked along, (Jesus) saw a man blind from birth.

Jesus saw him. The man was a blind and a beggar, put out to beg. Someone in trouble, leading a very rough life, someone on the outside of society in all sorts of ways.

Jesus said,

“ I am the light of the world." When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man's eyes,

From the point of view of the blind beggar, he heard Jesus speak, he heard him say “I am the light of the world” and then he was touching him, gently, with fingers covered with mud, so that with the heightened sense of being touched of a blind person, he would know he was being touched. Not a blow, not a shove, but someone caring about him.

Then the blind beggar heard Jesus tell him to go wash in the pool of Siloam in Jerusalem. Perhaps the beggar got some of his friends to take him there – other beggars but one of them who could see. Then he went and washed and came back able to see.

The Anointed One – the Messiah, the Christ – reached out in his compassion and love, to anoint this blind beggar in the earthiest way, most literally down to earth way, and brought healing and sight and light.

Wow. Hurrah. You would think the neighbors would give a party, throw a fiesta.

Wrong.

The beggar they had put out to beg as a blind defenseless person, they now threw out as daring to claim healing. We human beings have great down home talents for ostracizing others.

Jesus went looking for him and found him

And then comes the beautiful ending – or rather the almost ending -- when Jesus heard the man had been driven out and went looking for him and found him.

…and when he found him, he said, "Do you believe in the Son of Man?" He answered, "And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him." Jesus said to him, "You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he."

God sent Jesus to come look for us and find us. Jesus is God looking for us, who has found us – God with us.

“You have seen him.” You and I see him in his story. We see him in art and poetry and music which bring that story alive – the St. Matthew Passion, the stained glass in Chartres.

You and I see him in his baptism and in his Supper, to which he invites us here.

You and I see him in people in need, and in serving them.

You and I see him, when we go alone to be with God and see nothing, and trust God is with us, and then know the inner Light of trust and faith and see the deepest truth of God’s abiding presence and care.

He said, "Lord, I believe." And he worshiped him.

God calls us to make these words our own. Lord, I believe – I trust. I offer my worship and love.

The very next words of Jesus in John’s Gospel

For all today’s story is long, where we ended in the reading is not the ending in John’s Gospel. For the very next words – the very next – are these: Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. ²The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. ³The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. ⁴When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. ⁵They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.’ ⁶Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.

7 So again Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. ⁸All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. ⁹I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. ¹⁰The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

11 ‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.'

(This sermon was preached by the Rev. Raymond Webster, Rector, in St. Chrysostom’s Church, Chicago, Illinois on Sunday, April 3, 2011, the Fourth Sunday in Lent.)

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The Bible texts are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, and used by permission.