When I was growing up, I always dreaded the pick-up ball games where the “captains” of each team alternately picked players from the group of boys hanging around. I was always one of the last to be picked. Maybe it was being ungainly from various parts of my body growing at different rates, or maybe I already had a reputation for being more brains than brawn. Whatever the reason, I was left shuffling my feet until all the better players had been chosen. At least there were a couple of pudgy kids who were always dead last.
Sometimes it seems like we spend most of our lives trying to figure out where we are in the pecking order, glad that we’re not as bad as those guys but envious of those who are better. At our worst, we humans enshrine in law who’s in and who’s out. (The state of Arizona is only the latest example of that, not to minimize in any way the iniquities that will likely result if their new immigration law takes effect.)
It’s nice to know, I guess, that spending a lot of time around the Son of God didn’t predispose Jesus’ disciples to naturally take to those who were different. As one commentator put it, their faith and knowledge are both inadequate; they are still of this world. So Jesus has to be very explicit. “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Oddly enough, that heart-to-heart talk took. Christians were recognized by their non-Christian neighbors as different. They actually got along and didn’t try to kill or cheat one another. (That would come much later.) Not only did they take care of their own, they also helped the poor and needy around them.
Some of those early Christians had trouble disentangling their Jewish roots, however. They weren’t interested in picking any Gentiles for their team. Paul had to be blinded for three days to get there. Peter had to dream of forbidden food while he was famished, and then argue with God about what he should eat. After hearing the same thing three times (a common event with Peter – he must have been a slow learner), he finally figured out that maybe God was right. Then when his preaching caused Gentiles to start speaking in tongues, even he was impressed. Apparently his Jewish friends were, too. (As an aside, I’m not quite sure what I’d do if my preaching caused an outbreak of tongues, but it’s not something on my worry list.)
If it hadn’t been for Peter’s dream, there wouldn’t be pork chops for dinner, and most of us wouldn’t be Christians. We’d still be kicking up dust at the edge of the ball field. Yet once we were picked for the team, it was easy to forget those left behind. But those are people God still loves just as much as us. And that’s a lesson we never seem to learn.
Easter 5: Acts 11:1-18; Psalm 148; Revelation 21:1-6; John 13:31-35. The commentator mentioned above is C.K. Barrett, whose The Gospel According to John is still the only Greek commentary I know. Besides, I’m using my father’s copy, a first edition. The passage quoted is from page 337.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Monday, April 19, 2010
Dorcas
When I was a child, I went with my mother to every church event next door. I had to. My parents couldn’t afford a babysitter, and my sisters were in college by the time I was seven. So I learned a lot about ladies’ clubs and Jell-O salad and other things that have turned out to be useful to a parish priest.
One church group that always mystified me was the Dorcas Society. Their function was clear enough – sewing items of clothing that would be given away. My mother and the other women would haul their sewing machines to the church once a month and sit for several hours turning big pieces of cloth into real clothes. I was fascinated by the magic of it all. Years afterward I was happy to get my mother’s old sewing machine and make everything from curtains to jumpers to kites.
But who or what was Dorcas? That was the mystery. Only much later did I realize that the group was named after someone in the Bible, the subject of this week’s resurrection story. (Or perhaps resuscitation; the text only says that Peter brought her back to life.) Dorcas must have either been pretty or fleet of foot to get her name (which means gazelle, as does Tabitha in Aramaic). Dorcas was also an excellent seamstress, even without a brand new Singer. When she died, her sewing club showed Peter the extensive wardrobe she had made by hand.
The story really is touching. Dorcas had died and was prepared for burial. The word had gotten out that Peter the Wonderworker was in a nearby town, so he was sent for. When he arrived, he was shown to the upper room where the weeping widows were keeping watch over the body. Peter needed some quiet, so he had them leave and then prayed. When he said “Tabitha, get up,” she opened her eyes and saw him. Then he put his rough fisherman’s hand in her soft seamstress’s hand and she got up, just like that.
Jesus had used similar words when he held the hand of a twelve-year-old child: Talitha cum – “Child, arise.” In that case, too, someone who was dead returned to life. One can speculate on natural reasons how it happened; certainly before embalming people were buried alive. But that’s not the point. The point is that one who seemed dead was now alive.
We aren’t told if Dorcas went back to sewing, but I’m sure she did. Like her namesakes centuries later, she probably got together again with her friends and turned shapeless fabric into useful clothing, amid talk of the latest doings and a table of Jell-O salads waiting by the side. That’s really what the church is at its best: people enjoying one another’s company while doing something that takes them beyond themselves. That, and making sure there’s enough food to eat when the work’s finished.
4 Easter: Acts 9:36-43; Psalm 23; Revelation 7:9-17; John 10:22-30.
One church group that always mystified me was the Dorcas Society. Their function was clear enough – sewing items of clothing that would be given away. My mother and the other women would haul their sewing machines to the church once a month and sit for several hours turning big pieces of cloth into real clothes. I was fascinated by the magic of it all. Years afterward I was happy to get my mother’s old sewing machine and make everything from curtains to jumpers to kites.
But who or what was Dorcas? That was the mystery. Only much later did I realize that the group was named after someone in the Bible, the subject of this week’s resurrection story. (Or perhaps resuscitation; the text only says that Peter brought her back to life.) Dorcas must have either been pretty or fleet of foot to get her name (which means gazelle, as does Tabitha in Aramaic). Dorcas was also an excellent seamstress, even without a brand new Singer. When she died, her sewing club showed Peter the extensive wardrobe she had made by hand.
The story really is touching. Dorcas had died and was prepared for burial. The word had gotten out that Peter the Wonderworker was in a nearby town, so he was sent for. When he arrived, he was shown to the upper room where the weeping widows were keeping watch over the body. Peter needed some quiet, so he had them leave and then prayed. When he said “Tabitha, get up,” she opened her eyes and saw him. Then he put his rough fisherman’s hand in her soft seamstress’s hand and she got up, just like that.
Jesus had used similar words when he held the hand of a twelve-year-old child: Talitha cum – “Child, arise.” In that case, too, someone who was dead returned to life. One can speculate on natural reasons how it happened; certainly before embalming people were buried alive. But that’s not the point. The point is that one who seemed dead was now alive.
We aren’t told if Dorcas went back to sewing, but I’m sure she did. Like her namesakes centuries later, she probably got together again with her friends and turned shapeless fabric into useful clothing, amid talk of the latest doings and a table of Jell-O salads waiting by the side. That’s really what the church is at its best: people enjoying one another’s company while doing something that takes them beyond themselves. That, and making sure there’s enough food to eat when the work’s finished.
4 Easter: Acts 9:36-43; Psalm 23; Revelation 7:9-17; John 10:22-30.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
An Instrument Whom I Have Chosen
We’re studying Paul’s missionary journeys on Wednesday evenings during the Easter season, at the suggestion of our deacon. At the first session last week, someone loaned me a book on Paul that “was too boring to read.” I made my way through the first chapter long enough to get the main thesis: Christianity would not exist as a world religion without Paul. Jesus himself was just another no-name revolutionary put to death by the Romans; it was Paul who turned him into the Son of God. And Nero’s blaming of the Christians for burning Rome put them on the map. If Nero hadn’t created martyrs, Christianity would have died out.
The underlying assumption of the author, which is never voiced, is that of course Jesus could not really have been divine. Such things don’t happen in our rational world. Somebody had to put that idea in everyone’s head. And who else but Paul? It’s an old, well-trod path, separating the Jesus of history from the Christ of faith, as though we can better know what happened in the first century than the people who were closest to it. We’ll use what they wrote, but then tell you what they really meant and what really happened.
What really happened is something strange on the road to Damascus. Paul never describes the event in his letters, but Luke gives three accounts in the Acts of the Apostles, one within the narrative and two as parts of Paul’s defense before his accusers. All of the accounts are a little bit different, which shouldn’t be surprising. All include a blinding light, a voice, and a commission. Paul’s commission comes through Ananias, a disciple who is sent into the lion’s den, as it were, to minister to this person who had been hauling Christians off to jail. (“Saul, still breathing threats and murder” is how the story starts.) When Ananias protests, God says, “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen…”
Paul always said that he was an apostle, sent by Christ, who appeared to him “last of all, as to one untimely born.” He counted himself the equal of (and sometimes better than) Simon Peter. But Paul didn’t go through the grilling Peter did. Peter had denied he knew Jesus three times in order to save his own skin, so when Jesus treated everyone to a post-resurrection breakfast, Peter had to say three times that he loved Jesus. Each time Jesus gave him a commission to “feed my sheep,” ending with the same words he had used when he first called Peter: “Follow me.” Peter, too, was an instrument whom God had chosen.
All of us are instruments of God. All of us have been chosen by God. Some days we sit like Paul, blinded, waiting for someone to come and show us the way. Or like Peter, having to be reminded multiple times what it is we are called to do. Other days the way is clear and the road straight. None of this has anything to do with Nero and the burning of Rome. Nor was it invented by Paul. Instead, it's what God had in mind all along – that each of us would hear in our own way the voice of the risen Jesus Christ saying, “Follow me.”
3 Easter: Acts 9:1-20; Psalm 30; Revelation 5:11-14; John 21:1-19.
The underlying assumption of the author, which is never voiced, is that of course Jesus could not really have been divine. Such things don’t happen in our rational world. Somebody had to put that idea in everyone’s head. And who else but Paul? It’s an old, well-trod path, separating the Jesus of history from the Christ of faith, as though we can better know what happened in the first century than the people who were closest to it. We’ll use what they wrote, but then tell you what they really meant and what really happened.
What really happened is something strange on the road to Damascus. Paul never describes the event in his letters, but Luke gives three accounts in the Acts of the Apostles, one within the narrative and two as parts of Paul’s defense before his accusers. All of the accounts are a little bit different, which shouldn’t be surprising. All include a blinding light, a voice, and a commission. Paul’s commission comes through Ananias, a disciple who is sent into the lion’s den, as it were, to minister to this person who had been hauling Christians off to jail. (“Saul, still breathing threats and murder” is how the story starts.) When Ananias protests, God says, “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen…”
Paul always said that he was an apostle, sent by Christ, who appeared to him “last of all, as to one untimely born.” He counted himself the equal of (and sometimes better than) Simon Peter. But Paul didn’t go through the grilling Peter did. Peter had denied he knew Jesus three times in order to save his own skin, so when Jesus treated everyone to a post-resurrection breakfast, Peter had to say three times that he loved Jesus. Each time Jesus gave him a commission to “feed my sheep,” ending with the same words he had used when he first called Peter: “Follow me.” Peter, too, was an instrument whom God had chosen.
All of us are instruments of God. All of us have been chosen by God. Some days we sit like Paul, blinded, waiting for someone to come and show us the way. Or like Peter, having to be reminded multiple times what it is we are called to do. Other days the way is clear and the road straight. None of this has anything to do with Nero and the burning of Rome. Nor was it invented by Paul. Instead, it's what God had in mind all along – that each of us would hear in our own way the voice of the risen Jesus Christ saying, “Follow me.”
3 Easter: Acts 9:1-20; Psalm 30; Revelation 5:11-14; John 21:1-19.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Easter Sunday
[The following is the text of my Easter Sunday sermon, for those who missed it. Next week I hope to return to a weekly blog based on the upcoming Sunday's lectionary.]
Jesus has died. There’s no mistaking that. He had suffered on the cross, watched by a lot of people, including a group of women who had followed him. They saw his body lowered from the cross and put in a tomb. They saw a big stone rolled against that tomb, and went away crying.
Mary Magdalene was one of those who had watched. As soon as the Sabbath day was over, long before dawn the next day, she went to the tomb to cry some more. There was enough light to see that the stone had been rolled back and the tomb was empty. So she ran and told Simon Peter what she had seen.
Peter went barreling out in the darkness to see for himself, with another disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, often identified with John the Evangelist. The scene is almost comical, with the young John outrunning Peter, who eventually arrived, huffing and puffing. John didn’t have the nerve to actually go into the tomb, but Peter didn’t hesitate. They both saw the cloths, but no Jesus. So they went back home, totally baffled.
Mary must have gone with them, because she stuck around to cry some more. So she is the one who has a conversation with the angels. And she is the first one to see Jesus, even though she doesn’t recognize him at first. It’s only when he calls her by name that she suddenly knows that he is the one she’s been looking for, and she holds on to him.
Each of the Gospel writers has a gripping story of the first Easter. Each one is a little different. But there are the same elements in each: the first witness to the resurrection is Mary Magdalene. The male disciples don’t believe her; they have to see for themselves. And no one seems to know what’s really going on. All of this is just what you would expect from people who have actually witnessed an event. If it were all made up, everybody’s story would be the same.
When we think of the resurrection, if we think of it at all, we often jump straight to the picture of paradise that we heard this morning in the passage from Isaiah. It was actually written during the time of Israel’s exile in Babylon, and the prophet was promising a new and much better life back in Israel. But the promise is expressed in cosmic terms: there will be a new heavens and a new earth, and a new Jerusalem. It will be a place where there will be no weeping, where people will live to old age in their own houses and eat the fruit of their own vineyards. They would be blessed by the Lord. The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. It’s a wonderful series of images. But it doesn’t much sound like earth now, does it?
And it doesn’t much sound like the Gospel stories of the resurrection, either. That’s because the resurrection of Jesus Christ was only the beginning. A new world started at Easter, and continues to embrace us through the power of the Holy Spirit, given to us at baptism. In the words of British Bishop N.T. Wright, the project that began at Easter, the defeat of sin and death, has not yet been finished. The full and final redemption of God’s good creation, and ourselves with it, will come when Jesus once again reappears.
So what’s to be done in the meantime? If you look closely at each of the resurrection stories, they don’t talk about personal hope. There’s no mention of life after death or eternal life. They don’t say, “Jesus is risen, therefore you will be too.” Those ideas don’t show up until later, after the Church reflected some more on the resurrection of Christ. No, if you listen carefully to these earliest Easter stories, they all say the same thing: “Jesus is risen, therefore you have work ahead of you.”
Consider the conversation Jesus had with Mary Magdalene in today’s Gospel. Jesus doesn’t say, “Tell everyone that they’ll be resurrected just like me.” Instead, Jesus says, “Go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my father and your father, to my God and your God.’” And so Mary goes out and becomes the first Apostle to the Apostles. She announces to them, “I have seen the Lord.”
What work does God have in mind for you? Where is God calling you in your life? One way to figure that out is to think about what you are passionate about. The author Fredrick Buechner put it beautifully when he said, “God calls you to that place where your deep joy meets the world’s deep longing.” That is where you are called to be a witness to resurrection life. That is where you will be able to say with Mary, “I have seen the Lord.” Easter is a beginning, not an end. The resurrection of Jesus Christ proclaims a new kind of life, a new heaven and a new earth. Jesus is risen, therefore you have work ahead of you. May you find that deep joy within you and may you be blessed in the work which God has given you to do. Amen.
Jesus has died. There’s no mistaking that. He had suffered on the cross, watched by a lot of people, including a group of women who had followed him. They saw his body lowered from the cross and put in a tomb. They saw a big stone rolled against that tomb, and went away crying.
Mary Magdalene was one of those who had watched. As soon as the Sabbath day was over, long before dawn the next day, she went to the tomb to cry some more. There was enough light to see that the stone had been rolled back and the tomb was empty. So she ran and told Simon Peter what she had seen.
Peter went barreling out in the darkness to see for himself, with another disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, often identified with John the Evangelist. The scene is almost comical, with the young John outrunning Peter, who eventually arrived, huffing and puffing. John didn’t have the nerve to actually go into the tomb, but Peter didn’t hesitate. They both saw the cloths, but no Jesus. So they went back home, totally baffled.
Mary must have gone with them, because she stuck around to cry some more. So she is the one who has a conversation with the angels. And she is the first one to see Jesus, even though she doesn’t recognize him at first. It’s only when he calls her by name that she suddenly knows that he is the one she’s been looking for, and she holds on to him.
Each of the Gospel writers has a gripping story of the first Easter. Each one is a little different. But there are the same elements in each: the first witness to the resurrection is Mary Magdalene. The male disciples don’t believe her; they have to see for themselves. And no one seems to know what’s really going on. All of this is just what you would expect from people who have actually witnessed an event. If it were all made up, everybody’s story would be the same.
When we think of the resurrection, if we think of it at all, we often jump straight to the picture of paradise that we heard this morning in the passage from Isaiah. It was actually written during the time of Israel’s exile in Babylon, and the prophet was promising a new and much better life back in Israel. But the promise is expressed in cosmic terms: there will be a new heavens and a new earth, and a new Jerusalem. It will be a place where there will be no weeping, where people will live to old age in their own houses and eat the fruit of their own vineyards. They would be blessed by the Lord. The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. It’s a wonderful series of images. But it doesn’t much sound like earth now, does it?
And it doesn’t much sound like the Gospel stories of the resurrection, either. That’s because the resurrection of Jesus Christ was only the beginning. A new world started at Easter, and continues to embrace us through the power of the Holy Spirit, given to us at baptism. In the words of British Bishop N.T. Wright, the project that began at Easter, the defeat of sin and death, has not yet been finished. The full and final redemption of God’s good creation, and ourselves with it, will come when Jesus once again reappears.
So what’s to be done in the meantime? If you look closely at each of the resurrection stories, they don’t talk about personal hope. There’s no mention of life after death or eternal life. They don’t say, “Jesus is risen, therefore you will be too.” Those ideas don’t show up until later, after the Church reflected some more on the resurrection of Christ. No, if you listen carefully to these earliest Easter stories, they all say the same thing: “Jesus is risen, therefore you have work ahead of you.”
Consider the conversation Jesus had with Mary Magdalene in today’s Gospel. Jesus doesn’t say, “Tell everyone that they’ll be resurrected just like me.” Instead, Jesus says, “Go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my father and your father, to my God and your God.’” And so Mary goes out and becomes the first Apostle to the Apostles. She announces to them, “I have seen the Lord.”
What work does God have in mind for you? Where is God calling you in your life? One way to figure that out is to think about what you are passionate about. The author Fredrick Buechner put it beautifully when he said, “God calls you to that place where your deep joy meets the world’s deep longing.” That is where you are called to be a witness to resurrection life. That is where you will be able to say with Mary, “I have seen the Lord.” Easter is a beginning, not an end. The resurrection of Jesus Christ proclaims a new kind of life, a new heaven and a new earth. Jesus is risen, therefore you have work ahead of you. May you find that deep joy within you and may you be blessed in the work which God has given you to do. Amen.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Palm Sunday
One of the drawbacks of keeping a blog is its regularity. That’s a problem common to columnists and cartoonists and preachers and anyone else who has a weekly deadline. Ideas tend to wane after a while. If I were more self-indulgent I could talk about myself all the time, but I’ve already done that in past journals and oh my goodness are they boring to read.
The truth is that it’s hard to write about the passion of Christ. I’m tempted every Palm Sunday to let the passion narrative speak for itself and forgo even a homily. It would make the clock-watchers and stomach-growlers happy, and there would be one less sermon to write for Holy Week. But it isn’t really fair. People yearning for good news want to find it somehow in that narrative, and it’s the job of the preacher to do so.
Palm Sunday is particularly hard because it starts out so well but ends so badly. It begins with a bit of a circus atmosphere in the parish hall, with noise and confusion and people scrambling for palms and the choir and congregation singing a hymn at several different tempos (if not keys). But then everything slows down for the long passion narrative. By the end of the service Jesus will be dead. We will have acknowledged our own complicity by calling him king and then shouting that he be crucified. Where’s the hope in that?
Well, I guess there isn’t any. That’s the point. Left to our own devices, we’d just as soon crucify God as praise him. I’m not about to say “Christ died for your sins,” in part because that’s self-evident. We’ve just demonstrated it. And that truth is just too painful to bear.
The temptation is to quickly say that that’s not the end of the story. True, it isn’t. Yet it’s worth dwelling for at least a moment on what that painful truth means. It means that we can’t save ourselves by our own efforts. If we can go so easily from praise to blame, there’s no assurance that, on our own, we can come through when we need to.
And that fact tells us something about the Jesus who died. If he was just a good man, a really good man, to be sure, someone who had a special relationship with God, but just another human being like you and me, there’s still no hope for us. Ultimately, he can’t do any more for us than we can do for ourselves.
That’s where the rest of the story comes in. Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. Because Jesus Christ was not just fully human but also fully divine, the resurrection of Christ revealed what God has in mind for us. Death is not the end. Our sins are not the end. We have new life in Jesus Christ. We still have to wait for both the resurrection of Christ on Easter and for our own resurrected life. But God promises that both will come in time. For that word of hope, thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
The truth is that it’s hard to write about the passion of Christ. I’m tempted every Palm Sunday to let the passion narrative speak for itself and forgo even a homily. It would make the clock-watchers and stomach-growlers happy, and there would be one less sermon to write for Holy Week. But it isn’t really fair. People yearning for good news want to find it somehow in that narrative, and it’s the job of the preacher to do so.
Palm Sunday is particularly hard because it starts out so well but ends so badly. It begins with a bit of a circus atmosphere in the parish hall, with noise and confusion and people scrambling for palms and the choir and congregation singing a hymn at several different tempos (if not keys). But then everything slows down for the long passion narrative. By the end of the service Jesus will be dead. We will have acknowledged our own complicity by calling him king and then shouting that he be crucified. Where’s the hope in that?
Well, I guess there isn’t any. That’s the point. Left to our own devices, we’d just as soon crucify God as praise him. I’m not about to say “Christ died for your sins,” in part because that’s self-evident. We’ve just demonstrated it. And that truth is just too painful to bear.
The temptation is to quickly say that that’s not the end of the story. True, it isn’t. Yet it’s worth dwelling for at least a moment on what that painful truth means. It means that we can’t save ourselves by our own efforts. If we can go so easily from praise to blame, there’s no assurance that, on our own, we can come through when we need to.
And that fact tells us something about the Jesus who died. If he was just a good man, a really good man, to be sure, someone who had a special relationship with God, but just another human being like you and me, there’s still no hope for us. Ultimately, he can’t do any more for us than we can do for ourselves.
That’s where the rest of the story comes in. Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. Because Jesus Christ was not just fully human but also fully divine, the resurrection of Christ revealed what God has in mind for us. Death is not the end. Our sins are not the end. We have new life in Jesus Christ. We still have to wait for both the resurrection of Christ on Easter and for our own resurrected life. But God promises that both will come in time. For that word of hope, thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Those Who Sowed With Tears
Some things you don’t really know about until you’ve experienced them.
I’ve heard priests talk about the toll a string of funerals takes on them and their parishes. Each time one walks through the valley of the shadow of death, a little more darkness remains. If those who die are long-time parishioners, it is not just family members who grieve, but everyone who has walked with that person through decades of joy and sorrow. Even a new priest can’t fail to sense the sadness that settles over everyone.
So far I’ve had one funeral a month this year, and the pace doesn’t show much sign of slacking. Oddly, the last rector had a string of funerals his first year – people who hang on until there’s a pastor in place to shepherd them to the next life? I don’t know. Only one of the three so far could have been predicted, although another is the denouement of a long struggle with cancer.
“Those who sowed with tears will reap with songs of joy.” I first encountered this psalm verse in the motet by Johann Hermann Schein, "Die mit Tränen saen", a piece near and dear to my heart. Only later did I realize that Johannes Brahms had also set it in Ein deutsches Requiem, a work my mother wanted sung at her funeral. (It wasn’t.) It’s an incredible promise God makes, that tears will be turned into joy.
“Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the watercourses of the Negev.” Give us something to drink instead of bowls of tears. And the Lord says, “I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert… I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise.” In the darkness of grief, it can be especially hard to see that we are created to praise God.
To praise God, but also to rise with Christ. As Jesus approaches his last Passover, he has dinner with his friend Lazarus, whom he had earlier brought back from the dead. Lazarus did not experience the true resurrection; that was yet to come. When Mary anoints Jesus and he speaks of his own death, that promise of new life lingers in the background. Like Mary, Lazarus, and Paul, we who are walking through the wilderness want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead. What does lie ahead, in less than three weeks, is the day when we can once again say Christ is risen! I can hardly wait.
Lent 5: Isaiah 43:16-21; Psalm 126; Philippians 3:4b-14; John 12:1-8.
I’ve heard priests talk about the toll a string of funerals takes on them and their parishes. Each time one walks through the valley of the shadow of death, a little more darkness remains. If those who die are long-time parishioners, it is not just family members who grieve, but everyone who has walked with that person through decades of joy and sorrow. Even a new priest can’t fail to sense the sadness that settles over everyone.
So far I’ve had one funeral a month this year, and the pace doesn’t show much sign of slacking. Oddly, the last rector had a string of funerals his first year – people who hang on until there’s a pastor in place to shepherd them to the next life? I don’t know. Only one of the three so far could have been predicted, although another is the denouement of a long struggle with cancer.
“Those who sowed with tears will reap with songs of joy.” I first encountered this psalm verse in the motet by Johann Hermann Schein, "Die mit Tränen saen", a piece near and dear to my heart. Only later did I realize that Johannes Brahms had also set it in Ein deutsches Requiem, a work my mother wanted sung at her funeral. (It wasn’t.) It’s an incredible promise God makes, that tears will be turned into joy.
“Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the watercourses of the Negev.” Give us something to drink instead of bowls of tears. And the Lord says, “I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert… I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise.” In the darkness of grief, it can be especially hard to see that we are created to praise God.
To praise God, but also to rise with Christ. As Jesus approaches his last Passover, he has dinner with his friend Lazarus, whom he had earlier brought back from the dead. Lazarus did not experience the true resurrection; that was yet to come. When Mary anoints Jesus and he speaks of his own death, that promise of new life lingers in the background. Like Mary, Lazarus, and Paul, we who are walking through the wilderness want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead. What does lie ahead, in less than three weeks, is the day when we can once again say Christ is risen! I can hardly wait.
Lent 5: Isaiah 43:16-21; Psalm 126; Philippians 3:4b-14; John 12:1-8.
Monday, March 8, 2010
A New Creation
So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. 2 Corinthians 5:17-18a
Paul is almost Semitic in the brevity of his language here. The Greek literally reads, “So if anyone in Christ, a new creation; the old/former passed away, behold it has become new.” The word used for creation can mean the act of creation (as in Romans 1:20) or the result of a creative act, that which is created. A footnote in the RSV (omitted in the NRSV) indicates that “creature” is an alternative translation, underscoring the latter meaning.
Consider how revolutionary this is. Paul is saying that by virtue of baptism into Jesus Christ, Christians are a completely new kind of “thing.” Knowing the resurrection of Christ, Paul anticipates the resurrection of all who have died in Christ, to a new body like Christ’s resurrected body. It is proleptic, to use a technical term: speaking of what is to come as though it has already happened.
The Greek word translated “reconciled” is also more nuanced than first appears. It means the reestablishment of an interrupted or broken relationship, or the exchange of hostility for a friendly relationship. Both, of course, are illustrations of reconciliation. Our relationship with God was broken through our sinfulness, and only through Christ is it repaired.
Yet this is not the end. As always with Paul, a statement of who we are is a preface to what God expects of us. We can’t just revel in being something new, or in being reconciled to God. We are now to be God’s agents of reconciliation to the rest of the world.
Priests are sometimes called icons of reconciliation, just as deacons are icons of service and bishops icons of oversight. Paul clearly states that by virtue of their baptism, all Christians have the ministry of reconciliation. The priesthood models that reconciliation to the rest of the Church. Whether individual priests do that well or not, the call to reconciliation remains. “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself…and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.” May we always fulfill that trust which God has in us.
Lent 4: Joshua 5:9-12; Psalm 32; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32. The Greek lexicon I use is often referred to as BDAG after its various editors.
Paul is almost Semitic in the brevity of his language here. The Greek literally reads, “So if anyone in Christ, a new creation; the old/former passed away, behold it has become new.” The word used for creation can mean the act of creation (as in Romans 1:20) or the result of a creative act, that which is created. A footnote in the RSV (omitted in the NRSV) indicates that “creature” is an alternative translation, underscoring the latter meaning.
Consider how revolutionary this is. Paul is saying that by virtue of baptism into Jesus Christ, Christians are a completely new kind of “thing.” Knowing the resurrection of Christ, Paul anticipates the resurrection of all who have died in Christ, to a new body like Christ’s resurrected body. It is proleptic, to use a technical term: speaking of what is to come as though it has already happened.
The Greek word translated “reconciled” is also more nuanced than first appears. It means the reestablishment of an interrupted or broken relationship, or the exchange of hostility for a friendly relationship. Both, of course, are illustrations of reconciliation. Our relationship with God was broken through our sinfulness, and only through Christ is it repaired.
Yet this is not the end. As always with Paul, a statement of who we are is a preface to what God expects of us. We can’t just revel in being something new, or in being reconciled to God. We are now to be God’s agents of reconciliation to the rest of the world.
Priests are sometimes called icons of reconciliation, just as deacons are icons of service and bishops icons of oversight. Paul clearly states that by virtue of their baptism, all Christians have the ministry of reconciliation. The priesthood models that reconciliation to the rest of the Church. Whether individual priests do that well or not, the call to reconciliation remains. “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself…and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.” May we always fulfill that trust which God has in us.
Lent 4: Joshua 5:9-12; Psalm 32; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32. The Greek lexicon I use is often referred to as BDAG after its various editors.
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