The Power of Holy Week

               When I was the rector of my parish, we usually had an “enacted Gospel” on Palm Sunday.  Participants would sometimes dress in costumes, but the point of it all was to dramatize the very long Gospel describing the last days of Jesus’ life.  There was the betrayal by Judas, the moments in the garden with Jesus praying and the apostles sleeping, then the arrest, the moment before the high priest, then the time with Pilate and the trek to Golgotha and the crucifixion.  I always loved those dramatizations because they made the Gospel come alive in the midst of the congregation.  We would have the people in the pews cry out “Crucify him!!” when the time came for the crowd to act.  It also gave a wonderful wholeness to the story, not just something that a reader was providing to us from a book at a lectern. 

            The problem with this story is that it is incredibly depressing.  We already know the outcome; the death of our savior on the cross and the dispersal of the apostles.  We know that Judas will be the betrayer and that Peter will deny that he knows Jesus three times.  In my homilies on those days, I tried to tell the people to not think about Easter; that the week we were heading into would involve the last supper on Maundy Thursday, the crucifixion on Good Friday and then Holy Saturday when God is essentially dead.  I have to admit that when I would come into the church on Holy Saturday and smell the flowers that were being arranged for Easter by the Altar Guild that I would secretly cringe because that anticipation was keeping us from the utter despair of the death of God.  I know that there was nothing else that the Altar Guild could do.  But it is that despair that is so wonderfully redeemed at the break of day on Easter by the resurrection of our Lord.  Without living through the despair caused by the crucifixion, it is hard for us to understand the incredible gift that Easter is for us.  Easter is nothing that we do for ourselves.  It is something that God does after we have done our worst in causing the crucifixion.  That is why Peter’s denial means so much to all of us.  It is not only Peter, but all of us who have denied Jesus.  It is also all of us who are given the great gift of the resurrection of Jesus by our God whose love transcends all of the evil that is in our hearts.

            That is what Palm Sunday means for me.  It begins with the slow journey through the streets of Jerusalem with the crowds laying palms before Jesus as he rides his donkey.  It ends with those same crowds calling for Jesus’ crucifixion and those palms are turned into a cross to hold the Son of God.  It is a remarkable transition.  We are a part of that crowd, both in the laying of the palms and the calling for the crucifixion.  We are the ones who have done it.  Keep that in mind as we go through this Holy Week.  When we understand our part in the death of Jesus, we will also know the magnificent wonder that we are given when our Lord emerges from the tomb.

Grace and Freedom

            There is a wonderful story behind the writing of Psalm 51.  In the First Book of Samuel, we hear that after David had seen Bathsheba bathing on the roof of her home next to his palace and had invited her to come over and had an adulterous affair with her and then had her husband Uriah the Hittite killed by sending him into the front lines of the war that was being waged with the Ammonites.  The prophet Nathan came to David and told him a story about a farmer who had a lone lamb that he had raised and treasured.  The master of his land had a flock of many sheep.  A visitor came to visit the master, and the master took the farmer’s only lamb and sacrificed it and served it to the visitor in a meal.  When David heard the story, he said what a travesty it was and that the man who had done this ought to be killed.  Nathan pointed at David and said to him: “you are the man,” alluding to his adultery with Bathsheba and the killing of Uriah.  According to the story, David was devastated by this accusation by Nathan and went back to his room and wrote Psalm 51, confessing his terrible sin and asking for God’s mercy.

            I’ve always loved that story because it so perfectly mirrors our own experience during this season of Lent when we are trying to confess our sins and to get back on the right track with our God.  It isn’t easy to look our sins in the face.  We suffer because of them much of the time. We hide them from one another, but we still keep them in our heart. There are extremes of this.  I have a friend who is in prison with a life sentence because of a murder that he committed many years ago.  I have been working with him to find some way that he can forgive himself for this, but it is a very difficult thing to do.  That is also true for those of us who have lesser offences.  Forgiveness is a wonderful, freeing thing that can bring us enormous benefit.  It can result in a more fruitful life, much goodness and better relationships.  God has offered this great gift to all of us.  All that we have to do to receive it is to say yes.  What makes it so difficult is that we persist in not being able to forgive ourselves.

        This season is a time to get rid of our sins by confessing them and receiving the forgiveness that God has promised to each of us. Psalm 51 is used in our Ash Wednesday service and it is there for us during all of this Lenten season as we get ready for the great festival of Easter with all of its promise of resurrection and eternal life.

            There is another story about the great hymn Amazing Grace.  It was written by an Anglican priest, John Newton.  Newton had been a slave trader, picking up slaves in Africa and transporting them to the United States.  One day when he was watching those slaves leaving his ship and the remains of those who had died on the journey being carried away, he was seized suddenly with terrible guilt when he all of a sudden realized what it had been that he was doing.  He carried this with him for years after abandoning his work as a slave trader.  Finally, later in his life, he was ordained as a priest and then wrote that magnificent hymn with the words:

                         Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound

                         that saved a wretch like me.

                         I once was lost, but now I’m found,

                         was blind, but now I see. 

            Every time that I hear that hymn, I think of John Newton and how he came to see his own sin and found forgiveness through prayer and his confession of what he had done.  It enabled him to live a valuable life as a priest who heard and understood others who confessed to him the things that they had done.  He experienced and then taught about that incredible intangible element that we call Grace: that touch of God’s love that lifts us out of the messes that we create and brings us back as the beloved children of God that we all are.  Grace is the blessing that awaits us when we look hard at ourselves and realize what we have been and what it is that we can be. 

      Lent is the time of the year when we are reminded of this great treasure that is ours simply for the asking.  The wonderful freedom that Grace gives us is nothing that we can create by ourselves.  It is a free gift from God to those who turn and confess what they have done and who ask to be included in that glorious love.  If there are things that are keeping you from receiving that love, simply confess them and hold out your arms.  You will find the freedom magnificent.

Scripture and God's Love

            There is a passage of scripture in Numbers that has always been a problem for me.  It describes the way that the Hebrews under Moses were struggling in the desert and had been given manna to eat, but were complaining of not only the manna, but also of being brought out of Egypt by Moses.  Why did you bring us out of Egypt to die in this wilderness? they ask.  They complain that there is no food and water, and that the food, the manna, is terrible.  God hears their complaints and sends serpents among them to bite them and some of them die.  They complain of this to Moses and Moses relays these prayers to God who tells him to make a serpent and put it on a pole and to tell all of those who are bitten to look at the serpent and that they will be saved.  Moses does this and those who are afflicted by the snakes are saved. 

            My problem with this is that is sounds to me as if God, who has saved these people from slavery all of a sudden doesn’t care very much about their comfort.  When they complain, he strikes at them, and only offers relief when Moses tells God of their problem. 

            When I look at my Christian faith, it is based on the overwhelming love that God has shown to humanity by over and over again trying to find ways to save us from the terrible things that we are prone to do.  Finally sending Jesus to come among us to discover what is like to be human, limited and fallible and from within that life giving us comfort that indeed God understands what humans endure not only from the world but from each other. 

            It is intriguing that when Nicodemus speaks to Jesus in John’s Gospel, and asks him some significant questions, that Jesus cites the story of Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness as the basis for the fact that Jesus himself must be lifted up also so that those who believe in him might have eternal life.   In that passage, John goes on to elaborate that those who do not believe will not be saved.  I’ve always thought that was the disciple’s own interpretation of that event, not necessarily something that Jesus said.  I would rather base my faith on the overwhelming love of God, who accepts all of us the way that we are and that love will see is through even though our different beliefs may seem to divide us. 

         Is it possible for those of us who don’t understand eternal life to receive it anyway?  I know that it is.  Our God loves us completely.  There is a reference in Paul’s letter to the Romans about the refiner’s fire that burns out all of our impurities.  I think that this is what happens when we meet our God.  None of us is perfect.  We all have parts of us that ought to be changed.  Our God certainly knows this.  But beyond our imperfections is the desire of God to keep us near.  To provide for us the kind of life that was intended for us from the beginning, and to have us be before God the way that we were originally created to be.  That for me is a primary statement of God’s love.  There is much in scripture that I think is there to scare us, to drive us by fear into the arms of God.  There is certainly enough in life already to do that.  I am comfortable relying on my God to take care of me even through death.  That is certainly the promise that we are given in the life, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus.

Keeping The Ten Commandments

             I don’t know about you, but I think that I have broken all of the Ten Commandments.  Shocked?  I hope not.  Those magnificent laws for all of us are rules that we ought to live by, but really don’t.  I have never killed anybody, but sometimes my anger has ruled my heart and I have lashed out at people who have offended me in ways that have not been at all helpful.  Murder was certainly in my heart on those occasions, even if I never committed the act.  I remember taking a candy bar from a store when I was a little kid.  I ate it with great joy, thinking that I had really gotten away with something.  That was stealing.  I have certainly taken the Lord’s name in vain on a number of occasions, particularly when somebody pulls out in front of me at an intersection.  I haven’t committed adultery, literally, but I have looked at women in a way that suggested that I wanted something more than looking.  Jesus told us that when we look at women in that way, that we have committed adultery already with them in our heart.  So chalk that one up against me also.

            God gave us those magnificent commandments in an attempt to restore humanity to that wonderful place before our desire for control gave us the knowledge of the difference between good and evil and we have been suffering from it ever since.  But we have never been able to keep the commandments.  We keep stumbling over them, rationalizing them and coming up with excuse after excuse to enable us to keep living the kind of lives that we want to live.  So God sent the prophets to help us to understand the way that we were intended to live.  Amos reprimanded the rich people in Israel for their life styles and reminded them to take care of the poor.  Ezekiel warned the people of the coming judgment of God if they continued their way of living, and Isaiah spoke comfort to the people after they were rounded up by the Babylonians and taken into exile.  But we never really listened to the prophets either. 

            Finally, God sent Jesus to show us what we needed to see in order to live the lives that we were created to live.  But we crucified Jesus because what he demanded of us was to give up our greed and our power and to take care of each other and to love each other with the same kind of eagerness that God has when we are loved.  God sent Jesus to humanity because we are infinitely loved and cherished by our God.  That is the love that we are asked to lavish on one another.

            That isn’t easy.  We frequently offend each other, either by our selfishness or our absolute beliefs that we are right and the other is wrong and we have trouble getting along with each other.  Look at our politics.  Some people want to describe us as a Christian nation, but then they go on to disparage others because they don’t believe the same things that we do.  That divides us from each other and creates barriers to understanding.  I know that God loves each of us.  God doesn’t care if we are Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, or whatever.  God is still God.  It isn’t necessary for all of us to call God by the same name.  What is necessary is for each of us to love each other, despite our differences in the way that God has loved us.  If we can do that, God’s kingdom is built and secure. 

            So what stands in the way?  Our egos are certainly a large part of it.  We want to be right, which means that others have to be wrong.  That is what divides us over and over again. 

            Jesus went to the Temple in Jerusalem during the feast of the Passover and chased the money changers and the sellers of animals out of the place.  Here was our Lord losing his cool and challenging the religion of the time.  This, according to John’s Gospel was the point where the officials knew for certain that they needed to get rid of Jesus.  He told them that if they destroyed the Temple, that he would raise it again in three days.  They mocked him about this because it had taken many years to build the temple; but Jesus was talking about his body and the Temple of his Spirit.  And certainly this is what happened.  When he was crucified by the Temple leaders in collusion with the Romans, Jesus was indeed raised again in three days.  This is the power of God working even in the midst of our most grievous sin.  Certainly killing the Son of God ought to rank that high.

            Here in the middle of Lent, as we move toward the Glory of Easter, is a good time for us to look closely at ourselves and think about how we so often offend each other and our God.  Receiving the wonderful forgiveness that God offers is only a first step toward a better life.  Continuing to love each other in the way that we have been loved is the way that we continue.  God bless us as we work toward the building of the glorious Kingdom of God through our relationships with each other. 

The Power of God's Grace

            When Jonathan Edwards preached his renowned sermon in Northampton, Massachusetts that was called Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God people in the pews got up and fled the church in terror.  Edwards eloquently spoke about God holding all of humanity over the pit of a fiery Hell by a spider-web thin strand that could break at any moment.  What people mostly miss about this sermon is the point.  Edwards was talking about God’s Grace:  that marvelous safety net that has been provided to all of us by the love of our God to keep us safe even and sometimes particularly from ourselves.  God’s Grace is an incredible benefit to all of humanity because, of our own volition, we would consign ourselves to the depths of Hell.  That is what those parishioners missed, and what many of Edward’s biographers have missed in that tremendous sermon.

            John Newton, the Anglican priest who was a former slave trader got the point exactly when he looked back over his life and repented of the way that he had taken slaves from their African homeland and deposited them in the New World, where their labor was used to their detriment.  He composed the wonderful hymn Amazing Grace to speak of the way that God redeemed his life from his past.  

            God’s Grace is what was operating when Abraham was told by God that he would be the father of many nations and that Sarah would give birth to a son.  When Sarah heard this news, she laughed behind a curtain and hoped that God wouldn’t hear her laughter.  The reason was that she was over ninety and Abraham was one hundred.  She was also barren and the idea of having a child seemed to her to be the most ludicrous thing that she could think of at that moment.  But God’s Grace was certainly operating and in the course of time, Sarah and Abraham became the parents of Isaac, which wonderfully means laughter.  Indeed, Abraham became the father of many nations and kings did indeed come from him.  God’s Grace is that incredible force that we hardly ever see, but which works in our lives to bring us gifts of unspeakable beauty.  We don’t often even know that it is working.  It takes faith to see it and hope to make it evident. 

            In my own life, I have felt God’s Grace work in my life a number of times.  When the television station that I was working for went bankrupt in the early seventies and I was without a job, I called my rector who arranged for me to meet the bishop and we talked about my going to seminary.  Somehow, all of the ruts in that road were easily achieved and I got my seminary education and became an Episcopal priest.  When I look back on all that went on during those three years, it seems as natural an event as I could imagine, although there were many, many problems and conflicts that we encountered.  God’s Grace is what got us through all of it. 

            When I had a large menengioma in the left frontal lobe of my brain, and was lying of the operating table waiting for the skilled surgical staff to remove it, I remember thinking that I had no idea how this was all going to come out, but that I knew that whatever it was that was going to happen, that I was going to be all right.  I meant that.  Even if I did not survive the operation, I knew that I was in the hands of the God who loved me beyond all else.  It was God’s incredible Grace that I was aware of and counting on at that moment. 

            When Jesus spoke to his disciples about what was going to happen in his life, about his crucifixion and eventual resurrection, he frightened them.  Peter took him aside and told him that what he had told them just had to be wrong.  Jesus told Peter to get behind me, Satan you are setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things.  Jesus was talking about how God’s Grace was operating in his own life, the Grace that would lead to his resurrection even after the evil of the crucifixion had occurred.  Like the parishioners in Jonathan Edward’s church, the disciples missed his point, as do most of us when we read these words in Mark’s Gospel. 

            The point is that God loves all of us infinitely.  God’s care, offered by what we call Grace, will get us through all of the things that this life brings to us.  God’s Love is our refuge from all of the evil that this world projects.  We need not fear, no matter what comes.  

The Wonder of Repentance

            I had my gall bladder removed last week.  It was a fairly easy procedure; I have only three incisions, which have now healed.  There were complications with it, though and I know that your prayers helped.  I got cards from some of you and I know that you were with me when all of this happened.  I thank God that the skills of the surgeon were so apparent in what he was able to do.  My gall bladder was full of stones and they had to get out the stones before they could remove the bladder itself.  It was an artful process that I was ignorant of because I was asleep with the anesthetic.  I have had very little pain with it, and have been getting back to normal with the help of my wife and my kids.  Our daughter Melanie is a nurse practitioner and her skills were needed when I was recovering.  I am a man who is richly blessed.

            We have left the season of Epiphany and have had Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday and are now at the beginning of the blessed season of Lent.  These are the forty days preceding our celebration of our Lord’s resurrection on Easter.  But I don’t want to think about that right now.  I want to focus on the season before us.  Lent is a time of repentance.  I think that is a word that is very much misunderstood by most of us.  We always associate it with sin and think that repentance is a process of admitting our guilt and receiving forgiveness for the bad things that we have done.  Certainly, we all need to be forgiven for those times that we have failed and gotten it wrong; but I think that the word repentance means a lot more.  It is a word that means changing direction.  To turn around and to see again where we are heading and what our goals are.  It isn’t simply about our failures.  It is a time to point to our success.  There is a beautiful verse in the Psalm that we read today.  Verses five and six of Psalm 25: 

Remember, O LORD, your compassion and love, *
for they are from everlasting.

Remember not the sins of my youth and my transgressions; *
remember me according to your love
and for the sake of your goodness, O LORD.

            I certainly remember the sins of my youth and my transgressions.  Youth is a time of growing up.  We aren’t mature when we are young and some of us take longer than others to understand what is required of us as humans in this world.  When I went to college, I hardly understood what I wanted to be when I grew up.  I didn’t do very well at Penn State, when I first went there, and only stayed for a couple of years.  I went to a radio announcer class in Pittsburgh after that and began a wonderful twenty-some year career in radio and television before the television station that I was working for collapsed and I was out of work.  When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time in my church.  I was brought up at St. Paul’s in Mount Lebanon, sang in the choir and even in the Cathedral choir for a couple of years.  I remember that we were paid about thirty-five cents a week to do that, which was enough for the carfare that got me to the rehearsals and to the services.  I also served on the vestry of some of the churches that Rosie and I attended while we moved around the country in my profession.  After the station collapsed, I called my rector and told him that I had been thinking about becoming an Episcopal priest.  He encouraged me, we saw the bishop and that fall, I started my seminary training at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia, one of the best seminaries in the church. 

            When I look back on what I have done, I was certainly blessed in my life.  The foolishness of my childhood and my youth was converted in to a wonderful career for me, not by my own doing, but obviously by the Hand of God.  I was fortunate to serve two churches in this diocese after I was ordained, St. Philip’s in Moon Township and Christ Church, North Hills.  After I retired in 1999, we went to West Virginia, where I was the interim rector of three churches and helped them in their continued worship.  I was fortunate indeed to be guided and helped out of my eager foolishness into something that I know was helpful to others. 

            Repentance is not an act that we can do by ourselves.  It requires people who are willing to put the past aside and embark on something new.  I know that is what God means by repentance in the season of Lent.  There is much goodness that needs to be done, and the church is God’s agency to bring it about.  Our churches are more than simply places to worship and feel good.  They are also the center of change for our communities.  I know that there is incredible need in this world, and we are in a place to help to fulfill that need.  Care of the poor and those who need healing are why we are here.  Whatever we can do to bring about hope and use the compassion that our God has bestowed on us is our mission.

The Christian Mission

            Mark’s is a very spare Gospel.  It is almost completely repeated in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.  They add many other stories.  There is no birth story in Mark and the story of Jesus’ resurrection ends very quickly with the women leaving the empty tomb in a great panic.  Mark’s was the first Gospel composed.  Before that, the stories of Jesus were told throughout the Christian community.  Finally, after a number of years, Mark was the first one to write them down.  It is a very short Gospel, making me wonder if the author was possibly a bit worried about telling too much. 

            The part of the story in the first chapter of Mark that interests me is what Jesus tells his disciples about his mission.  He wants to go to all of the little towns and do the same thing that he did for Simon’s mother-in-law.  He wants to heal and to cast out demons.  This suggests to me that this is one of the prime reasons that Jesus was here:  to correct some of the things that God saw as wrong with humanity.  Taking care of the poor and the neglected is one of the first things that Christianity set out to do from its beginnings.  This is in contrast to what was going on in the communities under the thumb of Roman rule at the time.  The power of the Emperor was absolute, and the needs of the poorest of the poor had no interest to them.  If you happened to be rich, you had all of the advantages of the time.

        Consider the story of Lazarus and the rich man commonly called Dives.  Dives stepped over Lazarus every day when he walked out of his house.  Poor Lazarus had nothing, not even a drink of water.  Dogs came and licked his sores.  When the rich man died, he was cast into the depths of Hell and when Lazarus died, he was taken to what the bible calls Abraham’s bosom.  Dives called out to Father Abraham asking that Lazarus be sent to bring him a drink of water.  Abraham said that there was a great gulf between them and that it couldn’t be crossed.  The rich man then asked that Lazarus be sent to tell his brothers about this; but Abraham said that they had Moses and the Prophets to tell them and if they didn’t believe them, then it wouldn’t matter even if someone rose from the dead.  That ended the story. 

            I’ve always been intrigued by what this story says about the resurrection of Jesus.  That it wouldn’t matter if someone rose from the dead to tell them is a terrible indictment of how we have responded to the resurrection.  Taking care of the poor and those in terrible need has been one of the first commandments that our Lord has given to us.  Loving our neighbor as ourselves includes taking care of those who have nothing.  We are not to judge, we are simply to provide loving care when it is needed.  Giving aid and care is primary to our mission. 

            Isn’t it interesting that the rich man after his death, when he was living in Hell, simply wanted Lazarus to provide for him a drink of water?  That is what Dives denied Lazarus when he sat at his door.  Care and healing is what both of them wanted when they were in dire need.  Lazarus had no ability to do anything for himself.  Finally, Dives lost that ability also. 

            Christianity did very well for several hundred years until finally Constantine recognized it as a valid religion, stopped much of the persecution, and the cross started to march ahead of the Roman armies as they fought and conquered.  That is when we began to lose our understanding of the Gospel and started to believe in power.  That’s when many people in the church lost their way and began to neglect the poorest among us.  Wonderfully, at about the same time in history, the monastic movements began to emerge and take care of people.  I see the hand of God entering the world again then and nudging the church in the direction that it had been initially created to go when it began to get out of bounds.  Taking care of those who have nothing is primary to our vocation as Christians.     

            When Rosie and I were in England on a long sabbatical back in 1991, we saw many, many large cathedrals that were originally built to the Glory of God by Christians who employed many workers in the process.  Those jobs made a great difference in the lives of the poorest people.  Today, many of those large churches are falling down and there is no money to restore them.  One of my favorite places in England is a place in Yorkshire called Fountains Abbey.  It is a ruin of a large church that was built by monks in the twelfth century.  It is a haunting place.  Walking though those elegant stones put me in a mystical place that is hard to describe, except that I knew that I was in the presence of God.  That church was also built by the poor and they benefitted from the work that they got in that place.  After Henry VIII destroyed the church and the monks went elsewhere, the spirit of God remained among those stones, and I felt that presence when I went there.  That is what Jesus was doing when he went through those towns and villages and healed and proclaimed the Gospel of God.  He was taking care of those who had no other resource and who needed the touch of God to enable their lives.  That is what we are all called to do as Christians.  God bless us as we do this incredibly important work.