Easter Vigil

April 20, 2019

+ I don’t know about you, but…

I LOVE Easter!

Some people like Christmas.

For them, that’s the real magical time.

But for me, it’s all about Easter.

This is what it is all about.

There is nothing, in my opinion,  like gathering together here on this glorious morning, in all of this Easter glory.

I just love Easter!

I love everything about it.

The light.

The joy we are feeling this morning.

That sense of renewal, after a long, hard winter.

An Easter eve like this reminds me that there is more to this world than we thought.

There is a glory that we sometimes catch a glimpse of.

There is an eternity and it is good.

There’s an old saying, “Eternal life doesn’t start when we die, it starts now.”

I love that.

Resurrection is a kind reality that we, as Christians, are called to live into.

And it’s not just something we believe happens after we die.

We are called to live into that Resurrection NOW.

Jesus calls us to live into that joy and that beautiful life NOW.

The alleluias we sing this evening are not for some beautiful moment after we have breathed our last.

Those alleluias are for now, as well as for later.

Those alleluias, those joyful sounds we make, this Light we celebrate, is a Light that shines now—in this moment.

We are alive in Christ now.

We have already died with Christ when we were baptized.

And in those waters, we were raised with him, just as he is raised today and always. Easter and our whole lives as Christians is all about this fact.

Our lives should be joyful because of this fact—this reality—that Jesus died and is risen and by doing so has destroyed our deaths. This is what it means to be a Christian.

Easter is about this radical new life.

It is about living in another dimension that, to our rational minds, makes no sense.

Even, sometimes, with us, it doesn’t make sense.

It almost seems too good to be true.

And that’s all right to have that kind of doubt.

It doesn’t make sense that we celebrating an event that seems so wonderful that it couldn’t possibly be true.

It doesn’t make sense that this event that seems so super-human can bring such joy in our lives.

Tonight we are commemorating the fact that Jesus, who was tortured, was murdered, was buried in a tomb and is now…alive.

Fully and completely alive.

Alive in a real body.

Alive in a body that only a day before was lying, broken and dead, in a tomb.

And…as if that wasn’t enough, we are also celebrating the fact that we truly believe we too are experiencing this too.

Experiencing this—in the present tense.

Yes, we too will one day die.

But, THAT doesn’t matter.

What matters is that that death is already defeated.

We are already living, by our very lives, by our baptisms and our faith in Jesus, into the eternal, unending, glorious life that Jesus lives in this moment.

Our bodies MAY be broken.

Our bodies WILL die.

But we will live because Jesus lives.

What we are celebrating this evening is reality.

What we are celebrating tonight is that this resurrected life which we are witnessing in Jesus is really the only reality.

And death is really only an illusion.

We aren’t deceiving ourselves.

We’re not a naïve people who think everything is just peachy keen and wonderful.

We know what darkness is.

We know what death is.

We know what suffering and pain are.

For those of us who have losses in our lives, we know the depths of pain and despair we can all go to in our lives.

It is this Light of Christ, that has come to us, this glorious night, much as the Sun breaks into the darkness.

What Easter reminds us, again and again, is that darkness is not eternal.

It will not ultimately win out.

Light will always win.

This Light will always succeed.

This Light will be eternal.

I am honest when I say that part of me wishes I could always live in this Easter Light.

I wish I could always feel this joy that I feel this morning.

But the fact is, this Light will lose its luster faster than I even want to admit.

This joy will fade too.

But I do believe that whatever heaven is—and none of us knows for certain what it will be like—I have no doubt that it is very similar this the joy we feel this morning.

I believe with all that is in me that it is very much like the experience of this Light that we are celebrating this morning—an unending Easter.

And if that is what Heaven is, then it is a joy that will not die, and it is a Light that will not fade and grow dim.

And if that’s all I know of heaven, then that is enough for me.

The fact is, Easter doesn’t end when the sun sets tomorrow night.

Easter is what we carry within us as Christians ALL the time. Easter is living out the Resurrection by our very presence.

We are, each of us, carrying within us the Light of Christ we celebrate this evening and always.

All the time.

It is here, in our very souls, in our very bodies, in our very selves.

With that Light burning within us, being reflected in what we do and say, in the love we show to God and to each other, what more can we say on this glorious, glorious morning?

What more can we say when God’s glorious, all-loving, resurrected realty breaks through to us in glorious light and transforms us;

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!

Holy Saturday

April 20, 2019

+ We’ve all been here.

We’ve been here, in this belly of    hell.

We’ve been in this place in which there is nothing.

Bleakness.

No hope.

Or so it seems.

It’s not just a bad place to be.

It’s the worst place to be.

We have been in that place in which we seemed abandoned.

Deserted.

No one was coming for us, we believed.

No one even knew we were here, in these depths of hell.

Hell.

Holy Saturday is the time in which we commemorate not only the fact that Jesus is lying in the tomb—in which we perform a liturgy that feels acutely like the burial service.

We also commemorate a very long belief that on this day, Jesus, although seemingly at rest in the tomb, was actually at work, despite the fact that it seemed he was dead.

He was in the depth of hell.

This belief, of course, comes to us from a very basic reading of 1 Peter, and from the early Church Fathers.

Jesus descended into hell and preached to those there.  

The popular term for this is the Harrowing of Hell.

He went to hell and harrowed until it was empty.

As a follower of Jesus, I find the story of the Harrowing of Hell to be so compelling.

I find it compelling, because I’ve been there.

I’ve been to hell.

More than once.

As we all have.

I have known despair.

I have known that feeling that I thought I would actually die from bleakness.

Or wished I could die.

But didn’t.

Even death wasn’t, in that moment, the worst thing that could happen.

That place of despair was.

It’s the worst place to be.

Which is why this morning’s liturgy is so important to me.

In the depth of hell, even there, when we think there is no one coming for us—just when we’ve finally given up hope, Someone does.

Jesus comes to us, there.

He comes to us in the depths of our despair, of our personal darkness, of that sense of being undead, and what does he do?

He leads us out.

I know this is a very unpopular belief for many Christians.

Many Christians simply cannot believe it.

Hell is eternal, they believe

And it should be.

If you turn your back on God, then you should be in hell forever and ever, they believe.

If you do wrong in life, you should be punished for all eternity, they will argue.

I don’t think it’s any surprise to any of you to hear me say that I definitely don’t agree.

And my faith speaks loudly to me on this issue.

The God I serve, the God I love and believe in, is not a God who would act in such a way.

Now, I am not saying there isn’t a hell.

There is a hell.

As I said, I’ve been there.

But if there is some metaphysical hell in the so-called “afterlife,” I believe that, at some point, it will be completely empty.

And heaven will be absolutely full.

What I do know is that the hell I believe in does exist.

And many of us—most of us—have been there at least once.

Some of us have been there again and again.

Any of us who have suffered from depression, or have lost a loved one, or have doubted our faith, or have thought God is not a God of love—we have all known this hell. 

But none of them are eternal hells.

I do believe that even those hells will one day come to an end.

I do believe that Jesus comes to us, even there, in the depths of those personal hells.

I believe that one day, even those hells will be harrowed and emptied, once and for all.

Until that day happens, none of us should be too content.

None of us should rejoice too loudly.  

None of should exult in our own salvation, until salvation is granted to all.

If there is an eternal hell and punishment, my salvation is not going to be what I thought it was.  

And that is the real point of this day.

I love the fact that, no matter where I am, no matter where I put myself, no matter what depths and hells and darknesses I sink myself into, even there Jesus will find me. 

And I know that the Jesus I serve and follow will not rest until the last of his lost loved ones is found and brought back.

It’s not a popular belief in the Christian Church.

And that baffles me.

Why isn’t it more popular?

Why do we not proclaim a Savior who comes to us in our own hells and bring us out?

Why do we not proclaim a God of love who will bring an end, once and for all, to hell? 

We as Christians should be pondering these issues.

And we should be struggling with them.

And we should be seeking God’s knowledge on them.

On this very sad, very bleak Holy Saturday morning, I find a great joy in knowing that, as far as we seem to be in this moment from Easter glory, Easter glory is still happening, unseen by us, like a seed slowly blooming in the ground.

That Victory of God we celebrate this evening and tomorrow morning and throughout the season of Easter is more glorious than anything we can imagine.

And it is more powerful than anything we can even begin to comprehend.

In my own personal hells the greatest moment is when I can turn from my darkness toward the light and find consolation in the God who has come to me, even there, in my personal agony.

Even there, God in Jesus comes to me and frees me.

God has done it before.

And I have no doubt God will do it again.  

In the bleak waters of abandonment, God has sent the buoy, the lifesaver of Jesus to hold us up and bring us out of the waters.

That is what we are celebrating this Holy Saturday morning.

That is how we find our joy.

Our joy is close at hand, even though it seems gone from us.

Our joy is just within reach, even in this moment when it seems buried in the ground and lost.

Good Friday

April 19, 2019

+ The one word that has been with me these last few days has been a word most of us know well in our lives.

Brokenness. 

In many ways, that is what this day is all about.

Brokenness.

The Jesus we encounter today is slowly, deliberately being broken.

This moment we are experiencing right now is a moment of brokenness.

Brokenness, in the shadow of the cross, the nails, the thorns. 

Broken by the whips.  

Broken under the weight of the Cross.  

Broken by his friends, his loved ones.

Broken by the thugs and the soldiers and all those who turned away from him and betrayed him.

 In this dark moment, our own brokenness seems more profound, more real, as well.   We can feel this brokenness now in a way we never have before.  Our brokenness is shown back to us like the reflection in a dark mirror as we look upon that broken Body on the cross.

Like Jesus, we have all wondered at times in our lives if God, who once was such a source of joy and gladness to us, had turned away from us.  We have all known what the anguish of losing someone love feels like, whether we lost that person to death, or to a change of feelings, or simply due to desertion.  Some of us have known that fear that comes when we are faced with our mortality in the face of illness, and we think there will never be a time when we will never be well again. 

This dark place is a terrible place to be.

But as Bishop Charles Stevenson once wrote:

“To receive the light, we must accept the darkness. We must go into the tomb of all that haunts us, even the loss of faith itself, to discover a truth older than death.”

 Yes, we have known brokenness in our lives.  We have known those moments of loss and abandonment.  We have known those moments in which we have been betrayed.   We have known those moments when we have lost someone we have cared for so much, either through death or a broken relationship.   We have known those moments of darkness in which we cannot even imagine the light.

But, for as followers of Jesus, we know there is light.  Even today, we know it is there, just beyond our grasp.   We know that what seems like a bleak, black moment will be replaced by the blinding Light of the Resurrection.  

What seems like a moment of unrelenting despair will soon be replaced by an unleashing of unrestrained joy. This present despair will be turned completely around.  This present darkness will be vanquished.  This present pain will be replaced with a comfort that brings about peace.  This present brokenness will be healed fully and completely, leaving not even a scar.

In a short time (though it might not seem like it) our brokenness will be made whole.  And will know there is no real defeat, ultimately.   Ultimately there will be victory. Victory over everything we are feeling sadness over at this moment.  Victory over the pain, and brokenness, and loss, and death we are commemorating

This is what today is about.    This is what our journey in following Jesus brings to us.

All we need to do is go where the journey leads us.  All we need to do is follow Jesus, yes, even through this broken moment.

Because if we do, we will, like him, be raised by God out of this broken place. The God in whom we, like Jesus, trust, will reach out to us, even here, in this place, on this bleak day, and will raise us up.  

Following Jesus, means following him, even to this place. But, we, who have trusted in him, will soon realize this is, most definitely, not the end of the story. Not by any means.  We will, in a short time know, that,  in our following of him, we will know joy—even a joy that, for this moment, seems far off.  

Maundy Thursday

April 18, 2019

1 Corinthians 11.23-26; John 13.1-17, 31b-35

+ Tonight, we are in the midst of a mystery. Tonight we commemorate the mystery of Christ happening to us.   We commemorate an event in our lives as Christians that has changed us and affected us and transformed us and made our spiritual lives better.  

Tonight, we commemorate that incredible and amazing miracle—the institution of the Holy Eucharist.  Tonight, we remember the fact that Jesus took bread, broke it, gave it and said, “This is my body,” and that he did the same with the wine and said, “This is my blood,”

And that by doing so, something incredible happened. Christ happened. God in Christ broke through to us. God broke through to us and incredible and wonderful way.

Every Sunday, we participate in this incredible, holy event.   We come together.  We celebrate together this mystery.   We come forward and take this bread and drink from this cup and, in doing so, we take the Body and Blood of Christ. Every Sunday, our congregation celebrates this mystery, this miracle and this incredible conduit in which God still continues to come to us in this tangible, real way.  

In this bread and wine we share, Christ happens to us.  Christ is present with us in a unique and wonderful way.   And recognizing this presence, how can we be anything other than in awe of it? 

 We should be blown away by what is happening on our altar.  And we should remind ourselves that, no matter what we believe, Jesus is our spiritual food.

I will hear from people who tell me that it was this holy event of the Eucharist that  converted them and changed them and transformed them.  And that amazes me.  

I’m sure there are people out there who see what we do as archaic.   There are even some Christians out there who say we don’t need Holy Communion every Sunday.

I disagree.

We need Holy Communion every Sunday.  One of the reasons I came back to Church and have stayed in the Church as long as I have is this one act of the Church.  Even when I wandered away from the Church and journeyed about in my own spiritual journey, I oftentimes found myself craving what I had always experienced in the Eucharist.  And it was this deep desire for the Eucharist that brought me back to the Church in my twenties.

The reason we come to church is so we can experience God’s presence.  What better way than in in the Bread and the Wine and in one another?  The reason we come to church is to be strengthened in our everyday faith life.  We come to church to be fed spiritually, so that we can be sustained spiritually.

And the amazing fact is, people are still being transformed by this event.

 Each of us is transformed by what we do here.  And so is anyone who comes to our altars and experiences God’s Spirit coming to us in this bread and wine.   

This is why Holy Communion is so important.  This is why we celebrate this miracle every Sunday.

There is nothing else like this kind of worship in the Church.  It is one of the most intimate forms of worship we can know.  Christ truly comes among us and feeds us with the Spirit.   We form a bond with Christ in Communion that is so strong and so vital to our spiritual lives.

But Jesus tells us tonight, on the eve of his death, on the eve of his leaving us, that he will not leave us without something.  Rather, he will leave us with a sign of his love for us.

As John tells us tonight, “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”

He loved us even at the end so that he could leave us something to nourish us and sustain us until he comes to us again.   He leaves us this wonderful and amazing sign of God’s sustaining us.

But Holy Communion is more than just being fed in our bodies.   What we learn at this altar of ours, when celebrate the Eucharist together and we share Holy Communion together is that, Jesus is our Bread of Life, our cup of Salvation,  that Jesus is the Body given for us and the Blood shed for us, whenever we are starving or thirsting spiritually.

When we feel empty and lost, God comes to us and refreshes us.  God feeds our spirit with that presence of absolute love in our lives.

In other words, what Jesus is saying to us is: this is what will fulfill you.

This God who feeds us, with Spirit, with food. God then becomes the very staple of our spiritual lives.  God is the One who feeds that hunger we have deep within us, who quenches that seemingly unquenchable thirst that drives us and provokes us.   God fills the voids of our lives with this life-giving Presence.

But it’s more than just a moment.

This love that we experience in this Communion, is love that we can’t just hug to ourselves and bask in privately.  This love we experience in this Eucharist is a love that is meant, like the Bread and the Cup, to be shared with others.

“Love one another,” is Jesus’ commandment to us in those moments before he is betrayed, in those hours before he is tortured, on the eve of his brutal murder.

“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.”

Communion—and the love we experience in it—is not just something we do here in church on Sunday mornings or on Maundy Thursday.   It is something we take with us when we go from here.  It is something we take out into the world from here.

As Christians, we are not only supposed to share the Body and the Blood of Christ wherever we go because we carry those elements within us.  

We are to become the Body and Blood of Christ to those who need Christ.

And because we carry those elements within us, we are to feed those who are not just hungry of body, but are hungry of mind and spirit as well.

We are to share and BE the Body and Blood of Jesus with all of those we encounter in the world. 

How do we do this? We do it simply by loving.  By loving and accepting fully and completely.   That is how we live this Eucharist in our lives in joyful thanksgiving.

So, as we go from here this evening, during the rest of this Holy Week and especially during the holy season of Easter, let us go out into the world remembering what we carry within us.  Let us remember WHO we are carrying within us.  Let us remember what nourishes us, what sustains us, what quenches our own spiritual hunger and thirst.   Let us go out, refreshed and filled with life-giving bread and life-refreshing cup—following Jesus and serving God, who feeds us with his very self.

But let us go out also into the world ready to share that bread and cup that gives such life to us.  Let us show it in our actions and show it in our words.   Let us show it by living out that commandment of love to all.  Let that Presence of God within us nourish those around us just as it nourishes us.

Easter Letter

“Through the Paschal mystery…we are buried with Christ by Baptism into his death, and raised with him to newness of life.” —The Book of Common Prayer

April 17, 2019

Wednesday of Holy Week

Greetings! As we journey together through the darkness of Holy Week toward the glorious light of Easter morning, we do so with a sense of purpose and direction. Our eyes are set on the goal of the Light of Christ which shines in our hearts and gives us a hope that does not die.

As we near the Triduum of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday, and beyond to Easter I would like to invite each of you to join with me in commemorating Jesus’ last journey to the cross and celebrating the glorious Event of the Resurrection. There will be plenty of opportunities for worship during Holy Week and the Easter Season. A schedule of Holy Week/Easter events is included in this mailing.

Our Easter Vigil and Easter Day celebrations at St. St. Stephen’s will once again be the most beautiful and glorious services we celebrate during the year and this year is no exception. We will have a truly special and meaningful service of liturgy and music that will be memorable for all of us. And we will, once again, have special opportunities for our children as well.

And again, please know of my deep gratitude and joy in being able to serve alongside you at St. Stephen’s. You are an incredible congregation!

Peace,

Jamie+ 

  

Fr. Jamie Parsley

HOLY WEEK AT ST STEPHEN’S

Thursday, April 18 – Maundy Thursday

7:00 pm Holy Eucharist + Foot washing + Stripping of Altar

Friday April 19 –Good Friday   

12:00 pm – Good Friday service + Solemn Collects +

Veneration of the Cross + Eucharist of the Pre-sanctified

 3:00 pm – Stations of the Cross

Saturday,  April 20 – Holy Saturday

10:00 am – Holy Saturday service

8:00 pm—Easter Vigil

Lighting of the New Fire + Service of Light + Return of the Alleluia

Sunday April 21 – Easter

11:00 am – Holy Eucharist

Eloise Tackling First Holy Communion   

Palm Sunday

April 14, 2019

+ I know. I say this to you every Palm Sunday. But I’m going to say it again.  

Save your palms.

Keep them.

Fold them up , display them in your homes.

Keep them throughout this year.

Let them dry out.

Because next February (which I know seems like ages away), I will ask you to bring them back to church. Because these palms that are so young, and green and fresh this morning, in February will be burned and made into the ashes for Ash Wednesday.

See, the cycle of our liturgical year.  It’s interesting to ponder them in such a way. There is a strange kind of cycle here.

These palms represent us, in many ways.  In fact, everything that is about to happen this coming week, speaks to us on a very personal level.

As we approach this Holy Week, we need to keep in mind a very important reality. What is about to happen in Holy Week is about us, as much as it about Jesus.

Now, I’m not talking about this all in some abstract way. I mean it, when I say, this is our story too.  Let’s face it: we’ve been here. Our liturgy today—this service we have this morning—begins on a high note.

Jesus enters in a hail of praises. The crowds acclaim him. It is a wonderful and glorious moment as Jesus enters Jerusalem, praised by everyone.

But everything turns quickly. What begins on a high note, ends on a lowest note possible.

The crowds quickly turn against him. He is betrayed, whipped, condemned.  

And although we hopefully have not physically experienced this things, most of us, have been here at least emotionally. We have known these highs and lows in our own lives. We have known the high notes—those glorious, happy moments that we prayed would never end. And we have known the low notes—when we thought nothing could be worse.  And sometimes these highs and lows have happened to us as quickly as they did for Jesus.

Unless we make personal what is happening to Jesus in our Gospel reading this morning and throughout this coming week, it remains a story completely removed from our own lives.

As we hear this reading, we do relate to Jesus in his suffering and death. How can we not?  When we hear this Gospel—this very disturbing reading—how can we not feel what he felt?  How can we sit here passively and not react in some way to this violence done to him? How can we sit here and not feel, in some small way, the betrayal, the pain, the suffering?

After all, none of us in this church this morning, has been able to get to this point in our lives unscathed in some way. We all carry our own passions—our own crucifixions—with us.  We have all known betrayal in our lives as times. We have all known what it feels like to be alone—to feel as though there is no one to comfort us. Whenever we feel these things, we are sharing in the story of Jesus. We are bearing, in our very selves, the very wounds of Jesus—the bruises, the whip marks, the nails. 

And when we suffer in any way in this life, and we all have, we have cried out, “where are you, God?” That is what this story of Jesus shows us very clearly.

Where is God when we suffer? Where is God when it seems as though everyone has turned from us, and abandoned us? Where is God in our agony?

Where is God?

The death of Jesus shows us where God is in those moments.  Where is God? God is right here, suffering with us in those moments.

How do we know this? Because we see it clearly and acutely in this story of Jesus.

As I said, the Gospel story we heard this morning is our story.

For those of us who carry wounds with us, we are the ones carrying the wounds of Jesus in our bodies and in our souls as well. Every time we hear the story of Jesus’ torture and death and can relate to it, every time we can hear that story and feel what Jesus felt because we too have been maligned, betrayed, insulted, spat upon, then we too are sharing in the story. Every time we are turned away and betrayed, every time we are deceived, and every time we feel real, deep, spiritual pain, we are sharing in Jesus’ passion.

When we can feel the wounds we carry around with us begin to bleed again when we hear the story of Jesus’ death, this story becomes our story too.

But…and this is very important BUT, there’s something wonderful and incredible about all of this as well.  The greatest part about sharing in this story of Jesus is that we get to share in the whole story.

Look what awaits us next Sunday. These sufferings we hear about today and in our own lives, are ultimately temporary.

But what we celebrate next Sunday is forever—it is unending.  Easter morning awaits us all—that day in which we will rise from the ashes of this life—the ashes of Ash Wednesday, the ashes of these palms we wave this morning, and live anew in that unending dawn.

Next Sunday reminds us is that, no matter how painful our sufferings have been, no matter how deep our wounds are, God, who has suffered with us, will always raise us from this pain of ours, just as God raised Jesus from his tomb.  

God will dry all our tears.

All our pains will be healed in the glorious light of Easter morning.  

This is our hope.

This is what we are striving toward in case we might forget that fact.

Our own Easter morning awaits us, as well.

So, as difficult as it might be to hear this morning’s Gospel, as hard as it is to relive our pains and sufferings as we experience the pains and sufferings of Jesus, just remember that in the darkness of Good Friday, the dawn of Easter morning is about to break. With it, the wounds disappear.

The pains and the sufferings are forgotten.

The tears are dried for good.

The grave will lie empty behind us.

And before us lies life. Unending, pain-free life.  Before us lies a life triumphant and glorious in ways we can only—here and now—just barely begin to comprehend.