Holy Saturday

March 31, 2018

Matthew 27.57-66

+ This morning of course is a liturgically bare and solemn morning. We gather today in a church stripped to its barest bones. The Presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is gone—the aumbry’s door lies open, the sanctuary light is extinguished and is gone.  The crosses are veiled in black shrouds of mourning. 

It is a bleak and colorless place.

It is a time of mourning.

It is a time of loss.

This liturgy purposely, intentionally, has the feel of a burial service.  And liturgically we ponder the fact that Jesus’ murdered and tortured body this morning lies in a tomb.

Despite all this, as I have said many time over the years, I truly do love to participate in the liturgy this morning.  I love to preach about Holy Saturday.  I love to talk about it.  I love to mediate on it throughout the year. And I guess I do because it’s kind of an ignored day.

For the most part, Holy Saturday is not given a lot of attention by a majority of churches, at least here in the U.S. In places like Mexico, it is a big day. Holy Saturday in Mexico is also called Judas Day and it is on this day they burn effigies of Judas Iscariot.  It is called Judas day because it is popularly believed that Judas committed suicide early on this day. 

Now, Judas has become one of the most maligned and hated figures in human history. His act of betrayal is seen as the ultimate form of treason and cowardice. And of course, the tradition has always been that Judas, after he went out and hung himself, went to hell.  The end of the story.

There have been a few traditions about what happened to his body.   One says that he was the first one buried in the Potter’s Field that was used by the money he returned to the Priests.  It is also said, to this day, that anybody buried in that Potter’s Field decomposes within twenty-four hours.

So, like that, Judas—the symbol of deceit—disappears completely, without a trace.  It’s a sad end to a sad man. But there is a little glimmer of hope in all of this. 

Today, on this Holy Saturday, we also think about a popular tradition in the Church that you know I really love.You know I love it, because I peach about it regularly.   

The Harrowing of Hell, of course, is the event in which we imagine Jesus, on this Holy Saturday, descending among the dead in hell and bringing them back.   Most years on Holy Saturday I preach about the Harrowing of Hell and reference the famous icon of Jesus standing over the broken-open tombs pulling out Adam from one tomb and Eve from the other.  I always place that icon on the votive candle stand in the Narthex.

But there is another image I would like to draw your attention to—a more interactive image.  That image is, of course, the image of the labyrinth. One of the many images used in walking the labyrinth is, of course, the Harrowing of Hell.  When you think of the labyrinth, you can almost imagine Jesus trekking his way down to the very bowels of hell. There, he takes those waiting for him and gently and lovingly leads them back through the winding path to heaven. 

On this Holy Saturday, I also like imagine that one person Jesus greets and leads back is, of course, the new-arrived Judas.   Judas was, after all, one of the closest of the apostles.  And Jesus knew from the beginning what Judas was going to do.

In a sense, Jesus needed Judas to fulfill his destiny on that cross. I can imagine, then, that Jesus, upon reaching the bowels of hell on this day, sought Judas out especially, embraced him and quietly led him out, along with the others. It’s lovely to imagine and, whether it’s true or not, I like to cling to that image.

I do, because, I will confess, of all the apostles, I sometimes identify with Judas. I think we all do at times. 

 The image of the Harrowing of Hell—the image of the labyrinth—never becomes

more real for me than when I imagine myself as Judas, at that very center—shivering there in the dark, bracing myself for an eternity of separation from others and from God. I imagine myself as the Judas who deserves to have his effigy burned, who deserves to be maligned and shown as the epitome of treason. And in that dark, cold, lonely place, I, like Judas, am amazed when I see that glimmer of light in the darkness.

I, like Judas, am filled with a steadily-growing joy as the light grows larger and bolder and I realize that within that light is Jesus.  I, like Judas, am overwhelmed in that moment when God in Jesus comes to me in my desolation and my isolation and reaches out to me to embrace me and lead me away from that prison that I have made for myself by my foolish actions and cold-hearted ways.  

See, God is so powerful that even the depths of Hell are not out of God’s reach. Even there, God can come. Even there, God’s Light can permeate. Even there, God can break open the walls of the prison of hell and can let that freeing Light shine. This is what Holy Saturday is all about.

Even dead and lying in a tomb, Jesus still manages to make a difference—to do good. Even when it seems like the ultimate defeat has occurred, the ultimate victory is going on, right under the surface.

Holy Saturday is that glimmer of light in the darkest places of our souls. And that light that is about to dawn on us tomorrow morning—that light of ultimate and unending joy and gladness—is more glorious than anything we can even begin to fathom in this moment.

So let us this morning, strain into the dark.  Let us look with hope and joy toward that light that is approaching us.  And when we see him, there, in that light, coming toward us with his arms outstretched, let us run to him with that Easter joy.

Good Friday

March 30, 2018

+ I preached last Sunday about how I dreaded Holy Week this year. I dreaded it—I still dread it—because of today. This moment. This dark, silent moment.

What I have been keeping with me this week is that the story of Jesus, for us as followers of Jesus, is our story too. What we commemorate today isn’t just something that happened then, back then, in the distant past, to someone else—to Jesus.

It is where we are too. This is our story. And it is happening now, right now, for us.

This is our story.

This is our death. This is the death of those we love the most.

This is the part of the story we don’t want to be ours.

This bleakness.

This stripped away austerity.

This violence.

This…death.

We have reached the lowest point in this long, dark week.  Everything seems to have led to this moment.  To this moment—this moment of the cross, the nails, the thorns.

To this moment of blood and pain and death.

To this moment of violence and utter destruction.

We are here, in this moment, not finding much comfort, not finding much consolation. We have, after all, known in our lives what this despair is.

The day after my mother died last January, as her body was being cremated, I

The Pietà at Sts Anne & Joachim Catholic Church, Fargo. January 29, 2018

went to what is called the Grief Shrine at Sts. Anne and Joachim Catholic Church here in Fargo. There, tucked away in a far corner of the church, is a shrine for those who mourn. In it is a representation of the Pietà—the famous statue of Mary holding the dead body of Jesus. In her arms, Jesus has been taken off the cross and lies on her lap, while she gazes upward toward God, grief written on her face.

That day after my mother died, that statue was very potent reflection of my own grief at that moment.  In that statue, I saw myself and my mother. Though, for me, our saw our roles were changed. For me, it was not the mother holding the son. It was rather the son holding the body of the mother.

I too held my mother’s body that Sunday afternoon I found her, very much as Mary holds her Son in that statue. And because I recognized out shared place, though switched a bit, I saw that, yes, it too was my story.

See, this is our story too. What Jesus shows us in his life—and death—is that we are not alone. We don’t go through all this alone. Jesus went there too. And because Jesus did, God knows what we are experiencing in this awful thing called death.

Today—in the death of Jesus—we see that this is also the death of our loved ones. And it is our death as well.  And nothing fills us with more fear than this.

This is why, in this awful moment, we know despair.  In this dark moment, our own brokenness seems more profound, more real.  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, emaciated body on the cross, or held in the arms of his mother.

But…as broken as we are, as much of a reminder of our own death this day might be, as overwhelmed as we might be by the presence of death in our lives at times, so too is the next 48 hours or so.

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.

What seems like an eternal brokenness will replaced by complete wholeness.

Yes, we might die, but God is not dead. Yes, we might be broken, but God will restore all that is broken. Just as God restored the broken Body of Jesus, so God will restore us and our loved ones as well.

In short order, 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.

God will prevail even over even…this.  Even death has no power over the God of unending life!  This is what today is about too.  This is what our journey in following Jesus brings to us. All we need to do is go where the journey leads us and trust in the one who leads.

Palm Sunday

Photo of a palm I took in Miami Beach, FL, February 2017 

March 25, 2018

Mark 15.1-39

+  I have to admit—and I don’t like admitting this:This coming Holy Week is going to be a hard one for me. And I’m not talking about the work that’s involved in this week. I don’t dread that at all. I’m a church nerd, after all. I like doing church services and visitations and all the things involved with Holy Week.

I dread this coming week for one big reason: This coming week is going to be hard for me because of the emotional toll it will take.

As most of you know, I’ve been through a difficult Lent, to say the least, with my mother’s death in January. And now to have to emotionally face all that Holy Week commemorates is not something I can say I am looking forward to.

I think it is emotionally difficult for all of us who call ourselves followers of Jesus. How can it not, after all? We, as followers of Jesus, as people who balance our lives on his life and teachings and guidance, are emotionally tied to this man. This Jesus is not just mythical character to us.  He is a friend, a mentor, a very vital and essential part of our lives as Christians. He is truly “the Messiah, the son of the Blessed One,” that we heard in our Gospel reading for today.

So, to have to go through the emotional rollercoaster of this coming week in which he goes through his own death throes is hard on us, especially those of us walking through our own grief.   And today, we get the whole rollercoaster in our liturgy and in our two Gospel readings.

Here we find a microcosm of the roller coaster ride of what is to come this week.  What begins this morning as joyful ends with jeers. This day begins with us, his followers, singing our praises to Jesus, waving palm branches in victory.  He is, at the beginning of this week, popular and accepted.  For this moment, everyone seems to love him.

But then…within moments, a darkness falls.  Something terrible and horrible goes wrong.  What begin with rays of sunshine, ends in gathering dark storm clouds.

Those joyful, exuberant shouts turn into cries of anger and accusation.  Those who welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem have fled.  They have simply disappeared from sight.  And in their place an angry crowd shouts and demands the death of Jesus.

Even his followers, those who almost arrogantly proclaimed themselves followers of Jesus, have disappeared.  Their arrogance has turned to embarrassment and shame.

Jesus, whom we encounter at the beginning of this liturgy this morning surrounded by crowds of cheering, joyful people, is by the end of it, alone, abandoned, deserted—shunned.  Everyone he considered a friend—everyone he would have trusted—has left him. And in his aloneness, he knows how they feel about him.  He knows that he is an embarrassment to them.  He knows that, in their eyes, he is a failure. See, now, why I am not looking forward to this week?

But, we have to remind ourselves that what we encounter in the life of Jesus is not just about Jesus. It is about us too. We, in our own lives, have been to these dark places—these places wherein we have felt betrayed and abandoned and deserted, where we too have reached out and touched the feather-tip of the angel of death, so to speak.  

It is a hard place to be. And it is one that, if we had a choice, we would not willingly journey toward.

But this week is more than dealing with darkness and despair. It is a clear reminder to us that, yes, we like Jesus must journey roads we might not want to journey, but the darkness, the despair, death itself is not the end of the story.

Palm Sunday is not the end of the story.

Maundy Thursday and Good Friday are not the end of the story.

What this week shows us is that God prevails over all the dark and terrible things of this life.  And that God turns those things around again and again.  That is what we see in Jesus’ betrayal and death. What seems like failure, is the actually victory.

What seems like loss, is actually gain.

What seems like death, is actually life unending.

Now, in this moment, we might be downcast. Now, in this moment, we might be mourning and sad.

But, next Sunday at this time, we will be rejoicing.  Next Sunday, we will be rejoicing with all the choirs of angels and archangels who sing their unending hymns of praise to him.  We will be rejoicing in the fact that all the humiliation experienced this week has turned to joy, all desertion has turned to rewarding and wonderful friendship, all sadness to gladness, and death—horrible, ugly death—will be turned to full, complete and unending joy and life.  That is how God works.  And that is what we will be rejoicing in next week.

So, as we journey through the dark half of our liturgy today, as we trek alongside Jesus during this Holy Week of betrayal, torture and death, let us keep our eyes focused on the Light that is about to dawn in the darkness of our lives.  Let us move forward toward that Light.  Even though there might be sadness on our faces now, let the joy in our hearts prompt us forward along the path we dread to take.  And, next week at this time, we will be basking in that  incredible Easter Light—a Light that triumphs over the darkness of not only Jesus’ death, but ours as well.

5 Lent

March 18, 2018

Jeremiah 31.31-34; John 12.20-33

+ For any of you who became a member of St. Stephen’s during my time  here, you probably took my “Episcopal 101” class. I love teaching that class. And, I think, it’s been a fun class.

One of the aspects of that class that people always love—and this is something I used to do when I taught at the University of Mary—was offer a  “Stump Fr. Jamie” time.   To “Stump Fr. Jamie” the students can ask any question they would like regarding theology or spirituality or the Church.

Let me tell you, occasionally I had people who did a very good job of trying to actually stump me.  And once or twice, maybe—just maybe—they came close to actually stumping me.

Now, that’s not really fair. Because any time I might not be able to answer their questions, I just concede to that wonderful thing in the church we have called “mystery.”  Some things are just mysteries and we should accept the mysteries of our faith.

I know. I know. What a rotten thing for a priest to say. What a cop-out, right?   But what I have discovered every time a student asks questions is that, in actuality, they really are seeking.  And they are sometimes surprised to find their priest himself is a seeker as well.

The fact is, I have never made a secret of the fact that I am also a seeker, just like all of us this morning.  We’re all seekers.  We’re here this morning seeking something. People who aren’t seekers don’t need to come to church.

They don’t need to listen and ponder the Word.  They don’t need to feed on and ponder the mysteries of the Eucharist that we celebrate at this altar. People who don’t seek, don’t come following the mysteries of their faith.

I have discovered in my own life as a seeker, that my seeking, my asking questions and my pondering of the mysteries of this life and my relationship to God, are what make my faith what it is.  It makes it…faith.  My seeking allows me to step into the unknown and be sometimes amazed or surprised or disappointed by what I may—or may not—find there.

In our Gospel reading for today, we also find seekers.  In our story, we find these Greeks seeking for Jesus.

“Sir, we wish to see Jesus,” they say.

This one line—

“we wish to see Jesus”

—is so beautifully simple.  There’s so much meaning and potential and…yes, mystery, to it that I don’t think we fully realize what it’s conveying. And what I doubly love about it is that as beautiful and as simple as the petition is—

“we wish to see Jesus”

—we never, if you notice, find out if they actually get to see him.  The author doesn’t tell us. We find no resolve to this story of the Greeks seeking Jesus.

However, despite it being a loose end of sorts, it does pack some real meaning.  What’s great about scripture is that even a loose end can have purpose. 

One interpretation of this story is that that the Greeks—as Gentiles—were not allowed to “see” Jesus until he was lifted up on the Cross. Only when he has been  “lifted up from the earth,”  as he tells us this morning will he “draw all people to [himself].”

Jesus’ message at the time of their approaching the apostles is still only to the Jews.

But when Jesus is lifted up on the Cross on Good Friday, at that moment, he is essentially revealed to all.  At that moment, the veil is lifted.  The old Law has in essence been fulfilled—the curtain in the Temple has been torn in half—and now Jesus is given for all. It’s certainly an interesting and provocative take on this story. 

And it’s especially interesting for us, as well, who are seeking to “find Jesus” in our own lives. Like those Greeks, we are not always certain if we will find him—at least at this moment.

But, I am going to switch things up a bit (as I sometimes do).  Yes, we might be seekers here this morning.  But as Christians, our job is not only to be seekers.  Our job, as followers of Jesus, as seekers after God, is to be on the receiving end of that petition of those Greeks.  Our job, as Christians, is to hear that petition—“show us Jesus”—and to respond to it.  This is what true evangelism is.

Some might say evangelism is telling others about Jesus. Possibly. But true evangelism is showing people Jesus. And, let’s face, that’s much harder than telling people about Jesus.

So, how do we show Jesus to those who seeking him?  Or, maybe, even to those who might not be seeking Jesus?

We show people Jesus by doing what we do as followers of and seekers after Jesus.  We show people Jesus by being Jesus to those around us.  Now, that sounds impossible for most of us.  The fact is, it isn’t.  

This is exactly what Jesus wants us to be. Jesus wants us to be him in this world.  We, after all, are the Body of Christ in this world.  He wants to be our hands, helping others.  He wants to speak through our voices in consoling others, in speaking out against the tyrants and despots and unfairness of this world.  He wants to be our feet in walking after those who have been turned away and are isolating themselves.

When we seek to bring the Kingdom into our midst, we are being Jesus in this world. We might not always succeed in doing this.  We might fail miserably in what we do. In fact, people might not find Jesus in us, at all.  Sometimes, whether we intend it to or not, we in fact become the “Anti-Jesus” to others. But that’s just the way it is sometimes.  In seeking Jesus and in responding to others who are also seeking him, we realize the control is not in our hands.

It doesn’t depend on any of us.  Which, trust me, is comforting.  I personally don’t want all that responsibility.  Nor, I’m sure, do any of you.  Who would?

In today’s Gospel, we find Jesus saying:

“Very truly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls on the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

In those moments in which we seem to have failed to be Jesus to those around us, when those who come to us seeking Jesus find, rather, nothing, or, worse, the “Anti-Jesus,” we find that even then, fruit can still come forth.  

God still works even through the negative things life throws at us.  God still works event through our failures and our shortcomings. Jesus can still be found, even despite us.   Jesus can still be found, even when we might not even be seeking him. Jesus can be found, oftentimes, when we are least expecting to find him.

Certainly, Jesus is here this morning in our midst.  He is here in us.  He is here when we do what he tells us to do in this world He is here when we open ourselves to God’s Spirit and allow that Spirit to speak to us in our hearing of the Word.

Jesus is here in the Bread and Wine of our Eucharist.

Jesus is here in us, gathered together in Name of Jesus.

And let me tell you, Jesus is definitely out there, beyond the walls of this church, waiting for us to embody him and bring him to them.

He is never far away.

So, let us, together, be Jesus to those who need Jesus, who are seeking Jesus.  Let us show them Jesus.  Let us together search for and find God, here, in the Word where we hear God speaking to us. Let us search for and find Jesus in this Holy Eucharist, in which we feed on his Body and Blood.

As we near the end of this Lenten season and head into Holy Week, let us to heart those words we heard God speaking to the prophet Jeremiah:

“I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.”

Let us, a people whose iniquity has been forgiven and whose sin is remembered no more,  search for God. In going out from here, let us encounter those people who truly need God.  And, in encountering them, let us also help those who are seeking.

“We wish to see Jesus,” the Greeks say to the disciples.

And people still are saying that to us as well.

“We wish to see Jesus.”

Let us—fellow seekers of Jesus—help them to find him in us.