Good Friday

 

April 15, 2022

 

 

+ Way back in 2019, when we got our beautiful new altar, when it was consecrated by Bishop Carol Gallagher, part of the consecration rite included pouring chrism over the top of it.

 

Chrism is the specially consecrated oil that is consecrated by a bishop, and is used for anointing.

 

Christ is even more special because it contains nard.

 

Nard is a very fragrant oil that is added to the olive oil of chrism.

 

And nard is also the oil that Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus, anointed the feet of Jesus with just before his crucifixion.

 

Nard is what the body of Jesus would’ve been anointed with when it was placed in the tomb.

 

And nard is used to consecrate an altar, because the altar is a representation of the tomb of Jesus.

 

Our altar here is a representation of the tomb of Jesus.

 

And that smell you smell today is nard, form chrism.

 

Last night, following our Maundy Thursday Mass, after the altar was stripped of its paraments, after it was stripped of the fair linen (which represents the burial shroud of Jesus), I poured chrism once again on the top of the altar and worked it in to the wood.

 

A few months ago, I purchased the beautiful cloth you see in glass before the altar.

 

It is called an epitaphios in the Greek Orthodox Church and a Plaschanitsa (plas-cha-neet-sa) in the Russian Orthodox Church, and in the Eastern Orthodox Church it represents the shroud in which Jesus is wrapped following his death on the cross.

 

As most of you know, I have a very deep love for the Eastern Orthodox Church.

 

I collect ikons and Orthodox religious art.

 

And the Epiptaphois has become one of my prized possessions.

 

And my love for the Eastern Orthodox Church has been especially painful due to the invasion of one Orthodox country—Russia—of another orthodox country—Ukraine.

 

This year the epiptaphios takes on a deeper meaning that past years in light of the war…no, let’s call it by what it really is, the attempted genocide—that is currently happening in Ukraine.

 

In a short while, there will be an opportunity for you to come forward, to venerate the cross of Christ—this cross that my father made that last Good Friday before he died (ironically he died on the Feast of the Holy Cross in 2010).

 

Later you will be invited to come forward for Holy Communion.

 

When you do, you will be able to see the epitaphios in more detail.

 

Look at it.

 

See it for what it represents.

 

In it we see the broken body of Jesus.

 

Pay special attention to the brokenness of Jesus’ body.  

 

The one word is what hangs in the air right now like the smell of nard from the chrism anointed into eh wood of this altar.

 

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.

 

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.  

 

I close today with the words from a beautiful hymn that is used on Good Friday in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

 

 

Come, let us see our Life lying in the tomb, that He [Jesus] may give life to those that in their tombs lie dead. Come, let us look today on the Son of Judah as He sleeps, and with the prophet let us cry aloud to Him: You have lain down, You have slept as a lion; who shall awaken You, O King? But of Your own free will  You rise up, who willingly gave Yourself for us. O Lord, glory to You.

Today a tomb holds Him who represents for us the One who holds the creation in the hollow of His hand; a stone covers Him who represents for us the One who covered the heavens with glory. Life sleeps and hell trembles, and Adam is set free from his bonds. Glory to Your dispensation, whereby You have accomplished all things, granting us an eternal Sabbath, Your most holy Resurrection from the dead.

(Hymns of the Ainoi)

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.

 

5 Lent

 

April 3, 2022

 

John 12.1-8

 

+ Occasionally when I get up into this pulpit I like to quote other thinkers and believers and saints.

 

And one of that I quote or reference quite often is one my heroes:

 

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

 

Chardin, as you many remember, was a truly remarkable person.

 

He was a French Jesuit priest, but he was also a scientist. More specifically he was a paleontologist.

 

He was one of the team that discovered the “Peking Man’ 100 years aho.

 

And because he was, and because he knew that’s such things as evolution were a reality, he often was at odds with the Roman Catholic Church.

 

Something many of us here have struggled with a few times in our lives as well.

 

There’s a lot of former Roman Catholics at St. Stephen’s.

 

And Fr. Teilhard would no doubt feel very at home here with us.

 

Well, Teilhard once made a fascinating comment that has meant so much to me in my life.

 

The actual quote comes from his incredible book The Phenomenon of Man:

 

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

 

And I have found that to be true in my own life as well.

 

We are spirits essentially experiencing this very human, very physical, very matter-filled pilgrimage toward God.

 

And we as spirits must deal with all the joys and sorrows, all the beauties and pains of having these physical bodies.

 

I think most Christians think that being a Christian means we only deal with the spiritual aspects of life.

 

But that’s not so.

 

The physical bodies we are given are also very important of our spiritual journey.

 

Even in today’s Gospel, we find Mary doing something that sort of encompasses this view of the sacredness of the body.  

 

We find her coming before Jesus and doing a very unusual thing: she anoints his feet.

 

And Jesus, even more strangely, reprimands jealous Judas by saying that Mary is doing nothing more than anointing his body for burial.

 

As we near Holy Week—that final week of Jesus’ life before the cross—our thoughts are now turning more and more to these “last things.”  

 

Yes, it’s all starting to sound a little morbid.

 

And no doubt, poor Judas was also thinking Jesus was getting weirdly morbid himself.  

 

But, Jesus is reminding us, yet again, that even the simplest acts of devotion have deeper meaning and are meant to put us in mind of what is about to ultimately happen.

 

Mary sees in Jesus something even his disciples don’t.  

 

She sees—and maybe doesn’t fully comprehend, though she certainly intuitively guesses—that Jesus is different, that God is working through Jesus in some very wonderful and unique way.  

 

And she sees that God is working through the very flesh and blood of Jesus.

 

For us, as Christians we do know that issues of the flesh are important.

 

And not in some self-deprecating way, either.

 

You will not hear me preaching much about the “sins of the flesh.”

 

(Don’t think I’m encouraging them either, though)

 

For us, flesh is important in a good way in our understanding of our relationship with God.

 

What we celebrate here every Sunday and Wednesday at the Eucharist is reminder to us how important issues like physical matter are.

 

We worship not only in spirit and in spiritual things.

 

We worship in physical things as well.

 

The altar.

 

The wooden cross.

 

Bread and wine.

 

Candles and bells.

 

Paraments and vestments and icons and stained glass.

 

And, on Wednesdays, incense.

 

These things remind us that we have senses, given to us by God.

 

And these senses can be used in our full worship of that God.

 

And that God that we worship is concerned with our matter as well.

 

God accepts our worship with all our senses.

 

God actually gets down in the muck of the matter of our lives.

 

And for us, it also kind of defiant.

 

So many Christians view physical things or the flesh as such a horrible, sinful things.

 

That baffles me.  

 

And as we all know, there are Christians who truly believe that.

 

The flesh is bad.

 

The spirit is good.

 

 

There are Christians who believe that these bodies of ours are sinful and should be treated as wild, uncontrollable things that must be mastered and disciplined and ultimately defeated.

 

Why we as Christians get so caught up with this awful ridiculous view that the flesh is this terrible, sin-filled thing that we are imprisoned within is frustrating for me.

 

In fact, the belief that the flesh is bad and the spirit all-good is a very early church heresy, which was condemned by the early Christian Church.

 

We have all known Christians who do think that flesh is a horrible, sinful thing—who think all we should do is concentrate only with the spiritual.  

 

For those of us in the know—even for those of who have suffered from physical illness and suffering ourselves in this flesh—we know that the flesh and the spirit truly are connected.  

 

20 years ago at this time I was dealing with cancer in my life.

 

It was awful.

 

We cannot separate the two while we are still alive and walking on the earth.

 

Which bring sus back to our good Jesuit Paleontologist friend, Teilhard

 

What are we?

 

We are “spiritual beings having a human experience.”

 

I think we could just as easily say (and Teilhard would wholly agree) that we are spiritual beings having a material experience.  

 

I, of course, don’t see that as a downplaying of our flesh.  

 

Rather, I see it as truly the spirit making the material holy.  

 

Our flesh is sacred because God makes it sacred.  

 

And if we have trouble remembering that our flesh is sacred, that God cares about us not just spiritually but physically, we have no further place to look than what we do here at this altar, in the Eucharist.  

 

Here, God truly does feed our flesh, as well as our spirits.  

 

And, we can even go so far as to say that by feeding our flesh, God becomes one with us physically as well as spiritually.  

 

The Incarnation + (“In the flesh” is what Incarnation means)

 

That is what Holy Communion is all about.

 

A week from Tuesday, of course, we will be celebrating the Requiem Mass for and burying the ashes of someone we will never know.

 

At least not on this side of the veil.

 

These ashes were discarded.

 

No one came to claim them.

 

There they sat for 60 or so years.

 

Whoever survived that person, their lives went on.

 

Now it’s easy to do.

 

It’s easy to just let ashes be ashes.

 

It’s easy to just say, “they’re just ashes.”

 

But for any of us who have lost people we truly love, that is not the case.

 

They’re not “just ashes.”

 

Those ashes are what remains of someone who lived and loved and longed for something more than this world often gives.

 

Those ashes were remains of someone who lived like we did and died like we will die.

 

Those ashes are us, to some extent.

 

Because we are interconnected.

 

We all matter to God.

 

(Geesh, I don’t want to give away my homily for that Requiem Mass).

 

But it is for this reason that we do what we do here at St. Stephen’s.

 

It is for this reason that we inter what others consider “just ashes.”

 

For us, these are not “just ashes.”

 

These are our ashes.

 

Next week, on Palm Sunday, we will begin our liturgy with joy and end it on a solemn note as we head into Holy Week.  

 

Next Sunday, we will also get palms.

 

Now, every year you hear me say: save those palms.

 

First of all, they are blessed palms.

 

We will bless them at the beginning of the Mass.

 

I say fold them, display them, let them dry out.

 

Because next winter, right before Ash Wednesday, I will ask you to bring them back to church.

 

Those green and beautiful palms that we wave next Sunday, will be burned and made into the ashes we use on Ash Wednesday, when we are reminded that we are dust, and to dust we shall return.

 

There is a strange and wonderful circle happening in all of this.

 

We see it all comes around.

 

And that God does really work through all of this in our lives as Christians.

 

Yes, even in the ashes, and matter of our lives.

 

Holy Week is a time for us to be thinking about these last things—yes, our spiritual last things, but also our physical last things as well.   

 

As we make our way through Holy Week, we will see Jesus as he endures pain physically and spiritually, from a spirit so wracked with pain that he sweats blood, to the terror and torment of being tortured, whipped and nailed to a cross.  

 

As we journey through these last days of Lent, let us do so pondering how God has worked through our flesh and the flesh of our loved ones.

 

Yes, we truly are spiritual beings enjoying a physical experience.  

 

We are spiritual beings enjoying an incredible and wonderful pilgrimage through matter.

 

So, enjoy it.

 

Exult in it.

 

Truly partake in this material experience.

 

Let us rejoice in this material experience God has allowed us.

 

Let us be grateful for all the joys we have received through this matter in which we dwell and experience each other.  

 

 And let this joy be the anointment for our flesh as we ponder our own end and the wonderful new beginning that starts with that end.