Wednesday, March 29, 2023
Sunday, March 26, 2023
5 Lent
March 26, 2023
Ezekiel 37.1-14; John 11.1-45
+ As I’ve shared a few times over these
last few years, I have been on a spiritual deconstruction journey.
It has been interesting.
And difficult.
But it was definitely needed.
I have found myself burning off some
of the so-called “fluff” of my spiritual life.
And the faith that has emerged from
this trimming and deconstruction has been something I didn’t quite expect.
But one of the big signs of
deconstruction came during this season of Lent.
Several years ago, I picked up an
interesting book.
I remember that it was one of those
books I thought, when I bought it, would be great Lenten reading.
The book is Heavenly Bodies; Cult treasures and Spectacular Saints From the
Catacombs.
It’s a book of photographs of
skeletons—yes, skeletons— from the Roman Catacombs that were, in the Middle
Ages, distributed about Europe as relics of the saints and early Christian martyrs.
More often than not, these relics
were placed in glass cases in churches, dressed in luxurious clothing and posed
in various lifelike displays.
It’s the kind of book that, if you
saw it, you would no doubt say: “This is a book Fr. Jamie would LOVE!”
I certainly thought that when I first
saw the book and when I first read it.
As you all know, I LOVE relics.
I love the supposed bones of saints,
as well items touched to the bones of saints, etc.
Well, this Lent I decided to re-read the
Heavenly Bodies book.
What great Lenten reading, I thought!
I sat down with it one cold, snowy night
(we haven’t any shortage of those this Lent), and…
…it creeped me out.
Looking at photograph after photograph of jewel-bedecked skeletons—full,
completely skeletons, often dressed in gold-encrusted clothing, with crowns and masks made of jewels, I will say, I actually got the creepy-crawlies.
I actually had to put the book aside.
For the first time in my life I
thought it was too much.
It reflected a spirituality I no
longer held dear.
And worst of all—I’m almost ashamed
to admit this—but I found myself actually agreeing with, of all people, (sigh) the
reformer John Calvin.
Even saying that feels like a bitter stone
in my mouth!
Calvin, of course, found such
displays of relics horrific.
He believed that displaying human
remains in any way was a travesty.
He believed, as we do, certainly our
Book of Common Prayer affirms this, that “all flesh is dust, [and] to dust it
must return…”
Calvin wrote, “To attempt the
resurrection of the dead ‘before the appointed time by raising them in pomp and
state’ was an offense.” (p. 26 Heavenly
Bodies)
And I will say there was something
kind of offensive about seeing these saints bones propped up in such a way.
I know.
John Calvin and Jamie Parsley.
Those are two names you probably
never thought you were hear in one sentence.
Certainly I never did.
But I agree with Calvin on this one.
At least like these relics are in
this book.
Those relics in that book, meant to
inspire people to have faith in the Communion of Saints and the sanctity of the
human body, only managed to shock me.
They jarred me in an unpleasant way.
There is something disconcerting about
looking into the empty eye sockets of human skull.
Why? Because they make us confront
our own mortality, our own deaths.
Certainly, our two readings today are
also sobering experiences that jar us and make us sit up and take notice.
The first, of course, is Ezekiel’s
vision of the dry bones.
It’s a great story in this Lenten
season and it speak loudly to the theme that I’ve used this Lent on our broken
selves being made whole.
The second reading is the raising of
Lazarus.
Both are filled with images of the
dead being raised.
The story that probably speaks most
deeply to us though is the story of Lazarus.
And this story takes on much deeper
meaning when we examine it closely and place it within the context of its time.
One of our first clues that the
something is different in this story is that, when Jesus arrives at the tomb of
his friend Lazarus, he is told that Lazarus has been dead four days.
This clue of “four days” is
important.
First of all, from simply a practical
point, we can all imagine what condition Lazarus’s body would be in after four
days.
This body would not have been
embalmed like we understand embalming today in the United States.
There was no refrigeration, no sealed
metal caskets, no reconstructive cosmetics for the body of Lazarus.
In the heat of that country, his body
would, by the fourth day, be well into the beginning stages of decomposition.
There would be some major physical
destruction occurring.
Second, according to Jewish
understanding, when the soul left the body, a connection would still be
maintained with that body for a period of three days.
(Keep this in mind when we ponder the
Resurrection of Jesus)
According to Jewish thinking of this
time, the belief was the soul might be reunited with the body up to three days,
but after that, because the body would not be recognizable to the departed soul
because of decomposition, any reuniting would be impossible.
After those three days, the final
separation from the body by the soul would have been complete.
The soul would truly be gone.
The body would truly be dead.
So, when Jesus came upon the tomb of
Lazarus and tells them to roll the stone away, Martha says to him that there
will be stench.
He was truly dead—dead physically and
dead from the perspective of his soul being truly separated from his body.
So, when the tomb was opened for
Jesus, he would be encountering what most of us would think was impossible.
God, working through Jesus, not only
reunited Lazarus’ spirit with his body, but also healed the physical destruction
done to Lazarus’s body by decomposition.
It would have been truly amazing.
And Jesus would truly have been proven to be
more than just some magician, playing tricks on the people.
He wasn’t simply awakening someone
who appeared to be dead, someone who might have actually been in a deep coma.
There was no doubt that Lazarus was
truly dead and now, he was, once again alive.
Now, at first glance, both our reading
from the Hebrew scriptures and our Gospel reading seem a bit morbid.
They remind us of the book Heavenly
Bodies.
These are things we don’t want to
think about.
But the fact is, we are rapidly
heading toward Holy Week.
Next week at this time, on Palm
Sunday, we will be celebrating the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem.
We will be hearing the joyful cries
of the crowd as he rides forth.
Within 11 days from now, we will hear
those cries of joy turn into cries of jeering and accusation.
And, within no time, we will be
hearing cries of despair and mourning.
We, as Christians who follow Jesus,
will be hearing about betrayal, torture, murder and death as Jesus journeys
away from us into the cold dark shadow of death.
These images of death we encounter in
today’s readings simply help nudge us in the direction of the events toward
which we are racing.
During Holy Week, we too will be
faced with images we might find disturbing.
Jesus will be betrayed and abandoned
by his friends and loved ones.
He will be tortured, mocked and
whipped.
He will be forced to carry the very
instrument of his death to the place of his execution.
And there he will be murdered in a
very gruesome way.
We commemorate this every Friday evening
during Lent in the Stations of the Cross we do here at St. Stephen’s.
Following that death, he will be
buried in a tomb, much the same way his friend Lazarus was.
But unlike Lazarus, what happens to
Jesus will take place within the three days at that time required for a soul to
make a final break from the body.
And this brings us back to the story
of Lazarus.
We often make the mistake, when think
about the story of Lazarus, that Lazarus was resurrected.
The fact is, he was not resurrected.
In seminary, I had a professor who
made very clear to us that Lazarus was not resurrected in our Gospel reading.
It was not resurrection because Lazarus
would eventually die again.
He was simply brought back to life.
God, working through Jesus, brought
Lazarus back to life.
He was resuscitated, shall we say.
So, Lazarus truly did rise from the
tomb in Bethany, but he was not resurrected there.
He went on to live a life somewhat
similar to the life he lived before.
(Probably a life no doubt deep
affected by what happened)
And eventually, he died again.
But Resurrection is, as we no doubt
know, different.
Resurrection is rising from death
into a life that does not end.
Resurrection is rising from all the
things we encounter in our readings for today—dry bones, tombs, decomposition
and death.
Resurrection is rising from our own
broken selves into a wholeness that will never be taken away from us.
Resurrection is new bodies, a new
understanding of everything, a new and unending life.
Resurrection, when it happens, cannot
be undone.
It cannot be taken away.
Resurrection destroys the hold of
death.
Resurrection destroys death.
And the first person to be
resurrected was not Lazarus.
The first person to be resurrected
was, of course, Jesus.
His resurrection is important not
simply because he was the first.
His resurrection is important because
it, in a real sense, destroys death once and for all.
Yes, we will all die.
Yes, we will go down into the grave,
into that place of bones and ashes.
But, the resurrection of Jesus casts
new light on the deaths we must die.
The resurrection of Jesus shows us
that God will rise us from the destruction of our bodies—and our lives—into a
life like the life of the resurrected Jesus.
We will be raised into a life that
never ends, a life in which “sorrow and pain are no more, neither sighing, but
life eternal,” as we celebrate in the Burial Office of the Book of Common
Prayer.
Because Jesus died and then trampled
death, God has taken away eternal death.
Our bodies may die, but we will rise
again with Jesus into a new and awesome life.
So, as we move through these last
days of Lent toward that long, painful week of Holy Week, we go forward knowing
full well what await us on the other side of the Cross of Good Friday.
We go forward knowing that the
glorious dawn of Easter awaits us.
And with it, the glory of
resurrection and life everlasting awaits us as well.
So, let go forward.
Let us move toward Holy Week,
rejoicing with the crowd.
And as the days darken and we grow
weary with Jesus, let us keep focused on the Easter light that is just about to
dawn on all of us.
Let us pray.
Loving God, give us faith that, even
in the darkness of the valley of bones and the tomb of Lazarus, you will show
us the unending Light of Resurrection and the promise of eternal life you
promise in Jesus our Savior. Amen.
Sunday, March 19, 2023
4 Lent/Laetare
March 19, 2023
1
Samuel 16.1-13; Ephesians 5.8-14; John 9.1-14
+ I know it’s not quite the word one
would expect at this half-way point through Lent.
In fact, it sounds suspiciously like a
word we haven’t used at all during this season—a certain A word that rhymes
with Malleluia.
But “Rejoice” is the word for today.
And it’s a good word to have.
Today is, of course, Lataere Sunday.
Laetare means, of course, mean "Rejoice" in Latin.
We are rejoicing on this Sunday because we are now at the midpoint of Lent.
We get a little break from Lent on this Sunday.
It’s not all purple and swishes and ashes around us.
It’s good to rejoice.
It’s good to take this time and just…breathe.
It’s good to reorient ourselves.
Ash Wednesday on February 22 seems like a long time ago already.
And Easter on April 9th seems to be in a very distant future.
This is where we are—right smack dab in the middle of this season.
The Gospel reading for this Sunday in the old lectionaries was John 6:1-15, the multiplication of the loaves and the fishes -- symbols of the Eucharist to come on Maundy Thursday of Holy Week.
But, I’m happy we have the Gospel reading we have for today.
This story of Jesus healing the blind man speaks very loud and very clear to us.
In a sense today—Lataere Sunday, this half-way mark
of Lent—is a time for us to examine this whole sense of blindness.
Not just physical blindness, but spiritual
blindness, as well.
My theme for Lent this year, as you
have all heard me say by now, has been brokenness.
In a sense, our brokenness and our
blindness are similar.
In our brokenness we become like blind
people—or, at least, like nearsighted people.
We grope about.
We find ourselves dependent upon those
things that we think give us come sense of clarity.
But ultimately, nothing really seems to
heal our nearsightedness.
In fact our sight seems to get worse
and worse as we go on.
For some of us our blindness is real
spiritual blindness.
And the causes of our blindness may
simply be things like depression or anxiety or frustration or anger or grief.
As you all know, I have certainly been
wandering around like a blind man for the last five years.
These five years since my mother died
have been years of deep darkness for me.
These were years that truly broke me.
And I have been very honest about that.
You have walked with me through these
dark years.
This was driven home to me in my
creative life.
As you all know, in addition to being
your priest, I am also a poet.
And poetry has been as much a part of
my life, and who I am as my being a priest.
But for these five years, my poetic
career languished.
I could not get much published.
I shouldn’t say that.
I won a couple of awards during that
time.
I did publish in some journals.
But I wasn’t able to write like I did
for the 25 years before that.
The book I sent out wasn’t rejected.
I could’ve handled that.
It was ignored.
And that was a first for me.
I truly examined myself during that
time and wondered if maybe I was done as a poet.
Examining ourselves is a good thing. But….
The problem to doing so is this: don’t
examine yourself too closely when you are walking around like a blind person.
Because you aren’t “seeing” anything.
And grief is blindness that truly does
enclose us in an ugly, dark place that does not allow growth.
In our Gospel reading for today, we
find a man blind from birth.
The miracle Jesus performs for him is
truly a BIG miracle.
Can you imagine what it must’ve been
like for this man?
Here he is, born without sight,
suddenly seeing.
It must have been quite a shock.
It would, no doubt, involve a complete
reeducation of one’s whole self.
By the time he reached the age he
was—he was maybe in his twenties or thirties—he no doubt had an idea in his
mind of what things may have looked like.
And, with the return of his vision, he
was, I’m certain, amazed at what things actually looked like.
Even things we might take for granted,
such as the faces of our mother and father or spouse, would have been new for
this man.
So, the miracle Jesus performs is truly
a far-ranging miracle.
There’s also an interesting analytical
post-script to our Gospel reading.
(And I’m certain I’ve shared this story
with you, but I always found it interesting)
St Basil the Great and other early
Church Fathers believe that this blind man was not only born blind, he was
actually born without eyes as some kind of birth defect
This, they say, is why Jesus takes clay
and places them upon the empty sockets, essentially forming eyes for this man.
When he washes them in the waters of
Siloam, the eyes of clay became real eyes with perfect sight.
It’s a great story, but the real gist
of this story is about us.
Our spiritual blindness often causes us
to ignore those in need around us and this blindness causes distance and
isolation in our lives, making our brokenness even deeper and more pronounced.
For me, my spiritual and creative eyes
were washed too, just recently.
A few weeks ago, that book I had been
sending around and was being ignored was accepted just days after I sent it out
to what I said would be the last publisher I would send it to.
Suddenly the darkness lifted.
Suddenly, I say in a way I had not seen
for five years.
Suddenly, the projects started rolling
in.
The dam broke and all those years of
creative energy that had been blocked up by grief and pain and darkness came
rushing forward.
We have all experienced moments like
this in our lives.
And when we do, how do we respond?
We respond by rejoicing.
Let me tell you, I have been rejoicing
this Lent!
That is certainly what this Sunday, Lataere
Sunday, is all about.
As we head into the latter part of
Lent, we find ourselves rejoicing.
We find ourselves relieved from the
heavy sense of brokenness we have been dealing with throughout Lent so far.
We find ourselves bathed in light—a
rose-colored light.
Our reading from Paul’s Letter to the
Ephesians shows us that we are not children of darkness.
We are not meant to walk around,
groping about in our lives.
We are not meant to walk under clouds
of grief and pain and anxiety and depression in our lives.
We are meant to walk in light.
We are meant to embody light in our
lives.
And, by that, we are not just meant to
hold the light close to us, as though it’s some special gift we are given.
We are not meant to hoard the light.
As children of light, we are meant to
share the light.
We are meant to be conduits of that
light.
To everyone.
Even when we might not feel like it.
We are anointed in much the same way
David was anointed by the prophet Samuel in our reading from the Hebrew Scripture
today.
We, who were anointed at our baptism,
are now called to be what David was—a person on whom the Spirit of God comes in
great power.
That Spirit brings light.
That Spirit brings spiritual clarity.
That Spirit brings vision.
That is what we are doing on this day.
Lataere Sunday, also known as Rose
Sunday or Mothering Sunday or Refreshment Sunday—is a break in our Lenten
grayness.
It is a time to refocus, to readjust
ourselves again, to remind ourselves of our anointing, of the light that dwells
within each of us.
Today, even in Lent, we can be joyful.
It is a time for us to realize that our
brokenness is not an eternal brokenness.
We realize today that no matter how
broken or fractured we might seem, we can be made whole once again.
No matter how blind or nearsighted we
might be spiritually, our spiritual sight can be returned to us once again.
Lataere Sunday is a great time to
remind ourselves that, even in our brokenness, we will not be broken forever.
We will be made whole like the blind
man.
There will be resurrection.
We too will see with clarity and
vision—with new eyes.
And like him, we too will see the
darkness lifted from our lives and God’s dazzling light breaking through.
So, today, on this Lataere Sunday—on
this joyful Sunday in Lent—let us be joyful.
Let’s be joyful, even in our
brokenness.
Let us be joyful even as we grope
about, spiritually half-blind as we may be at times.
Let us be joyful, because our
brokenness and our blindness are only temporary
But our joy—now that is eternal.
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