The Power of the Eucharist

      There is a wonderful prayer that I say every Sunday when I am behind the altar celebrating the Eucharist.  It starts by recalling the moment in the Last Supper when Jesus took the bread, held it up and told his disciples:  This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.  After supper, he took the cup of wine and said to them:  Drink you all of this. This is my blood which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.  As often as you drink it, do this in remembrance of me.  This prayer has been with us for two thousand years, helping us to understand that when we receive the bread and wine of the Eucharist, we are receiving the body and blood of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

            Eucharist is an important moment in our worship.  In this place, it is available for any of you.  You don’t need a ticket to participate.  God’s love is here and now and it is for all of us.  We don’t need to be a part of a special group to receive it.  All of this is made clear by the Gospel of Luke in the story of the two travelers on the road to Emmaus who meet a man on the road whom they don’t know.  They are a bit astounded that he doesn’t seem to know what has gone on in the last couple of days – how Jesus the prophet was betrayed by the religious establishment, given over to Pilate the governor, tried and crucified.  Now they say that some women have said that the tomb is empty and that they don’t know what has happened to Jesus’ body.  The stranger went on to explain the scriptures to them and point out every place in them where the Son of God is present.  When they get to the place where they were going, the stranger seems to want to continue his travel, but they invite him to come and to break bread with them.  Jesus does so and in the context of the meal, breaks the bread and drinks the wine and all of a sudden, he is made known to them as the risen Christ.  He then disappears and they go on with their lives, amazed at what they have seen. 

            The other thing that strikes me about this story is that it begins by saying that two of Jesus’ disciples were on the road to Emmaus. One of them is named Cleopas.  Cleopas is not a name that I am familiar with and it suggests to me that our normal understanding of twelve disciples may need to be expanded a bit.  Jesus had the last supper with the twelve that we know, and this post resurrection supper with two who may have been left out of some of the other stories.  This is unimportant, but it tells me that the number of the disciples has grown and continues to grow.  It also amazes me a bit that none of the women are mentioned as a part of those who attended the Last Supper.  Elsewhere in the story, the women are prominent, certainly at the crucifixion and at the resurrection, it is the women who made the most difference.  The men had drifted away.  But here are two new men who carry the story of meeting the risen Christ on the road with them as they get on with their lives. 

            All of this is why the Eucharist is such an important part of our worship.  It is the celebration of the presence of Jesus Christ, the Son of God in our midst and in our lives.  As I suggested to you last week, facts are lacking, then and also in this story.  It isn’t a provable concept.  It involves faith and belief.  The two men on the road to Emmaus had a life changing experience.  That is evident from listening to the story; and always what I hope your receiving the Eucharist is also.  Here we are in a worshipping community that has promised to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul and mind and to love our neighbors as persons like ourselves.  I can’t imagine a more welcoming community to be a part of.

            Our lives don’t always go well.  We all experience ups and downs and sometimes great grief as our days go on.  Here is where we can find comfort and compassion when we need it and also joy and fellowship on a regular basis.  You all bring important talents to this community.  You have the ability to listen and to share your lives.  That makes a difference.  We bring with us our joys and our failures with us when we come to this place to worship.  That always gives us a basis for conversation.  When we share our lives with each other, I hope that compassion and mercy are the major part of our response to each other.  When we do that, God’s infinite love is present among us.  There is nothing more wonderful that we can share.

           

       

Faith Conquers Fear

            I hope that your Easter was joyful.  Rosie and I had our kids, grandkids and our two great grandkids at our place for a wonderful dinner created by all of them.  Rosie made the sweet potatoes!

            That is such a day of celebration.  We have not only our Lord’s resurrection, but also the beginning of Spring, with great weather and the promise of more.  I am certainly ready for it.  Winter and cold are not my favorite things.  I love sitting on the patio and reading under the awning and feeling the breeze in my face. 

            What I love about our lessons as we get into the Easter season is that this season certainly isn’t over.  In the lesson from John today, Jesus’ disciples are all gathered in one room when all of a sudden, Jesus appears to them.  They are astonished.  Notice how the passage begins:  When it was evening, the first day of the week and the doors of the house where the disciples met were all locked for fear of the Jews… Here they are in their fear, waiting for who knows what.  Their Lord has been crucified and they are afraid.  But all of a sudden, their Lord is present.  He showed them his hands and his side and the disciples rejoiced.  He said to them:  Peace be with you! And as the Father has sent me, so I send you.  This is the beginning of the church.  He breathes on them and says Receive the Holy Spirit.  And he sends them out to forgive the sins that they find.

            Thomas isn’t with them.  When he came back to them, they told him, “we have seen the Lord!”  Thomas. told them “unless I see the marks of the nails on his hand and put my finger in them and put my hand in the wound in his side, I will not believe.” 

            A week later, they were all gathered again and Thomas was present.  Jesus again appeared to them and spoke to Thomas:  Here, put your finger in the wounds in my hand and your hand in the wound in my side.  Do not doubt, but believe! Thomas said, “my Lord and my God.”  Then Jesus says the most meaningful thing of all.  Do you believe because you have seen me?  Blessed are those who have not seen me, yet believe! That is you and me that Jesus is talking about..  We have only our faith to show us the presence of our Lord in our lives.  We haven’t seen his wounds or his body lying in the tomb.  All that we have are the scriptures that tell the story and the testimony of the followers of his who so firmly believed.  That faith is what we take with us into our lives to help us to deal with all of the things that happen to us; to celebrate our joy and to dry our tears because of our distress.  The truth is that our Lord is at our side and we are blessed when we believe that.

            We hear a lot these days about fake news and alternative facts.  This story about Jesus’ resurrection isn’t about either of these things.  It is about faith.  Faith is belief without necessarily having any facts to prove what we believe.  When I consider all of Holy Scripture, there are many places where facts are obscure and I’m not really sure what it is that happened.  What I hear in the stories is always helpful.  The stories in the bible tell us truth.  Most often, the facts of the story don’t really matter.

             When we were in Jerusalem, we got into a taxi and the driver asked us if we wanted to go to the home of the Prodigal Son.  We thanked him, but declined his offer.  He didn’t know where the Prodigal Son lived, nobody knows that.  It is simply a wonderful story in the Gospel that tells the truth about how it is that God receives the lost back into his care.  There have been many prodigal sons. I’ve been one. Some of you have been one!  The beauty of that story is that   God’s love is eternal and applies to us all.  Where those people lived or if they really lived is not important.  What matters is the truth of what that story tells us all.

            We all struggle with faith from time to time.  When things in our lives go sour, sometimes it is hard to believe that our God loves us.  We blame God when we ought to be looking at other causes.  We humans don’t always treat each other very well.  The other thing that we experience these days is fear.  Fear that North Korea will unleash nuclear weapons; fear that the things that have made our lives better, such as affordable health care may vanish. But God never promised us a perfect ride; only that His Love will remain constant no matter what it is that happens to us in our lives.  Our faith is a solution to our fear.  Faith connects us to the only thing that matters: the great God who loves us completely.  Our church is a collection of people of faith.  Each of us is here to help the other.  That is the beauty of community.

            Those disciples of Jesus, who witnessed his resurrection and saw the wounds in his hands and in his side were sent into the world by our Lord to forgive sin and to make the world a better place for the people whom they met along the way.  That is the same thing that Jesus did during his whole ministry.  You and I are the descendants of those disciples.  Our mission is to do what we can to help those whom we meet in this world.  When we love others, we spread the Love of God farther into this world.  What keeps us going is our faith.  Believe in the Lord with all of your heart, soul and your mind.  When you do that, all will be well.   

            

Happy Easter!

            I’ve never experienced a resurrection.  Not that I haven’t wanted to.  There have been a number of times when I have stood beside a casket at a funeral and have looked at the grieving family and I’ve wished that I could somehow bring their loved one back to them.  Grief is a difficult thing to experience.  We all have done it.  Even grieving over the death of a pet is a hard thing to go through. 

            This isn’t a day of grief, it is a day of joy at the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, who died that horrible death on the cross on Good Friday and was buried in a borrowed tomb.  That death produced grief on the part of all of Jesus’ followers, his family and his friends and we all experienced the loss of our Lord who meant so much to this world.  The message of Good Friday is that the God whom we all worship is dead.  God came to earth in the form of Jesus of Nazareth, and showed us all the love, mercy, compassion and joy that God has intended for all of us.  Our response to that outpouring of love was to kill our Lord and to ignore the consequences of that.

            I have had the experience of walking through the church on Holy Saturday, the day after Good Friday and have smelled the flowers that the altar guild has set out for the following day and I have thought that there was something wrong here.  Holy Saturday is the day that God is dead.  Why are we celebrating?  Yes, I know that time is of the essence and that the Altar Guild really had no choice in their timing. They had to get it all done.

            But now it is Easter.  This is a day to celebrate the beauty of the resurrection of our Lord, the giving back to us of the Son of God who took away the sins of the world and who made so many lives brighter with his love.  Simply listening to the stories that we have told of the mercies that he brought to so many people is enough to help us to see the beauty that God has conferred on this world by the life of his Son. 

            Today, we receive the greatest gift that can be given to any of us:  the certainty of resurrection and eternal life.  When the Irish experience a death, they many times have what is called a “wake”.  This is a time of celebration for the life of the deceased and the certainty that their loved one has attained eternal life.  That is a wonderful idea.  Celebration at the time of death might seem to be out of place, but it is a statement of the truth of our faith.  We will see each other again when we all find ourselves in the arms of God.

            The story that is told in John’s Gospel about the resurrection is remarkable.  Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb early in the morning and finds the stone rolled away and the tomb empty.  She runs and tells Peter and the other disciples that “they have taken the Lord’s body away and I don’t know where they have laid him.”  Peter and the other disciple, the one that Jesus loved, ran to the tomb and found it empty.  They saw the linens lying apart, but didn’t understand what had happened.  They returned to their homes. 

            Mary stood outside the tomb weeping.  Two angels were there who asked her, “woman, why are you weeping?”  She told them that it was because they had taken her Lord away and that she didn’t know where they had laid him.  She turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she didn’t know that it was Jesus, she supposed that it was the gardener.  She said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where he is and I will take him away.  Jesus said to her, “Mary!” Mary said to him “Rabbouni”, which means teacher and she reached out to touch him.  Jesus said not to hold on to him because he has not ascended to the father. Her tears of grief turned into tears of joy. Mary ran and told the disciples: “I have seen the Lord!”

            I can’t imagine a more wonderful story.  Mary’s grief is incredible and when Jesus says her name, Mary! It creates great joy in her where grief had been the only thing that she had been able to feel.  This is the Lord’s presentation of resurrection to all of us in a way that we can take   for our own.  It helps me to imagine that after my death, I will see a strange figure before me who will turn out to be my Lord.  Jesus will turn and say Rodge! And I will know that my life in eternity has started. That is the message of Easter and it is why it is the greatest holiday of our year.  God bless all of you.  Enjoy yourselves on this wonderful day!

From Joy to Despair and Back to Joy

           Palm Sunday is such an extraordinary day.  When I was at Christ Church, North Hills, we would always dramatize the long Gospel for this day.  Various people would dress up and take parts.  I was always Pilate, or one of the priests who was denouncing Jesus.  I remember one Sunday when Judas came running down the aisle and threw the thirty pieces of silver at our feet and ran away again.  It was a great dramatization of this terrible moment in Jesus’ life; betrayed by his disciples, convicted by the religious authorities and put into the hands of Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor who was certain to have him killed. 

            All of this happens to Jesus after a triumphal march into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey with the crowds throwing palms at his feet in tribute.  They all thought that their days of limited freedom was over and that this great king on a donkey was going to be the solution to all of their problems.  That was certainly true, but not in the way that they thought.  Jesus was coming in triumph.  His triumph was to provide salvation and resurrection to all of the people.  This was much more than the desire of people who had lived under Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian and Roman rule and had little say about their lives.  Jesus was present to provide for them the kind of life that God had in mind for all of humanity. 

            Palm Sunday is the beginning of Holy Week, with Good Friday preceding the glory of Easter.  We go through this story year by year looking closely at the life of our Lord to again understand the passion that he endured willingly so that we all can look forward to eternal life, even though death is a certainty.  Jesus certainly knew what he was doing, and his disciples also knew what the outcome would be.  When Jesus was preparing to go to Bethany to raise Lazarus from the dead, Thomas said to the other disciples: “Let us go and die with him.”  Even though the disciples all ran away from the cross, there is certainty that they knew what was going to happen.

            What Jesus brought to all of us is compassion and mercy.  Those are the things that get us through life with all of its difficulties and moments of crisis.  I have watched how these two beautiful qualities can lift spirits and provide comfort, even in the most desperate times of life.  That wonderful old song for children: Jesus loves me, yes, I know, for the bible tells me so is a great tribute to our Lord’s life and his spirit.  I was at a clergy conference one year when our speaker was asked what was the most important thing for us to understand about Jesus.  He sat down at the piano and played and asked us all to sing that simple song.  It was a moment to relish.  He was teaching us about the beauty of love; God and Jesus for all of us, and us for one another.  It is hard to think of another quality that reaches as far.

            Love is what Jesus was doing not only on Palm Sunday, but throughout his ministry.  We have heard stories over the last month in our scriptures about how Jesus took care of the people whom he met along the way; the man born blind, the woman at the well and poor Lazarus dying in Bethany. Every time that he encountered someone with pain or great need, his attention focused on how to heal, how to comfort, how to express compassion.  All of the wonderful stories that we continue to hear about our Lord tells us constantly this story. 

            Our response to this great gift needs also to be to love.  We are living in a very difficult time in our history.  Bigotry, misogyny and other nasty traits seem to be expressed by people everywhere who ought to know better.  There are many people who are hurting and who feel like they are neglected and left behind.  We all need to care deeply about this and to make sure that those people who feel outcast and alone are not left there.  As we go about our lives, we need to look around us and take the needs that we see seriously and to offer our comfort and help to ease the stress, to raise hopes and to help us all to get through the difficult moments.  That is how we serve the Lord, who gave himself completely for all of us.

           

           

             

         

Death and Our Lives

            Death is a hard thing for us to encounter.  It is difficult to listen to television night after night to hear about all of the shootings and the way that human beings take life from each other.  Those who kill don’t seem to have any appreciation for human life.  When I hear Dylan Roof talk about how he killed the people in the Charleston church it almost sounds like bragging.  He did it out of a sense that his white supremacist values were reason enough.  It hurt to listen to him try to offer this as a reason.  Death is a difficult thing because we all have relationships with each other.  We have developed affection and caring with the people whom we know.  Losing them takes value out of our lives.

            I remember when my parents and Rosie’s parents died.  We lost a great deal when that happened.  My dad was only 67 and my mother lived until she was almost 89.  Rosie’s dad was in his sixties and her mother was only in her fifties.  We mourned those losses and we still remember them.  This all comes to mind because we had two funerals in the last two weeks. Rosie’s uncle David died and we lost John Fetterman, a great priest of the church who was the interim at Christ Church, North Hills in 1981 before I became their rector.  We mourned these dear people also.

            I’m certainly not telling you anything new.  You have all had your own experiences with death and you know well the hurt that it creates.  One of the great things about this faith of ours is that it speaks to this problem with eloquence.  Jesus came to help us to understand that our God intends for us to have eternal life.  He proved this with his own death and resurrection which we will celebrate in a few weeks with the glorious Easter season.  In the process of his ministry in this world he provided a number of hints that this was what he intended to do.  The lessons that we heard today offer a window into that thinking and Jesus’ work to show eternity to all of us.

            The Old Testament lesson is that great passage from Ezekiel about the valley of the dry bones.  God sent the prophet to that place to speak to all of the dried bones lying there.  As he was instructed, Ezekiel called on those bones to rise.  He watched while they came together, took on sinew and flesh and then began to breathe.  God told him that these raised bones were the whole of the house of Israel who were being given back their land and their hope.  This was a beautiful moment for those seemingly lost people. 

            In the Gospel, we hear of the remarkable story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.  This is an incredible story.  Jesus tells his disciples that his friend Lazarus is sick and that he must go to him.  He, surprisingly, waits a couple of days before he goes to him.  When he gets to Bethany, Lazarus’ home, Jesus hears that his friend has died.  Martha, Lazarus sister comes to him as he walks and says to him: Lord, if you had been here, our brother would not have died!  I don’t think that I can say those words with the pain and grief that Martha expressed.  After Mary came and said the same thing to him, Jesus asked them: Where have you laid him?  Jesus went to that place and wept.  This was not just some mechanical thing for Jesus, the raising of Lazarus.  Jesus had deep feelings about his friend and he wanted him to be alive.  Some of the Jews who were near the grave said, see how much he loved him; but others said could not this man who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?

            Jesus then went to the tomb, which had been sealed with a large stone and asked the people to take the stone away.  Martha warned him that it had been four days since the burial and that there would be a stench.  Jesus called for Lazarus to come out of the tomb.  Lazarus came from the tomb with his body wrapped in bandages.  He was unbound and walked away.

            What strikes me about these two stories is how they impact our lives.  Death is not to be taken lightly.  When Jesus wept at Lazarus’ grave, he told us that our grief is real.  And Lazarus’ raising tells us that God has eternity in mind for all of us.  May we be blessed in this life that we live and comforted when we experience the death of those whom we love.  Help us to know the beauty of life everlasting and be blessed always.