Feast of the Ascension

Where is God?  It’s a very simple question.  It’s also one which our modern minds have trouble answering.  The Biblical writers thought of God as being up in the sky, or beyond the sky.  And that idea has carried over in the old fashioned word for the sky, heaven.  Originally, “sky” and “heaven” meant the same thing.  We now use the word “sky” for what is above us as we stand on the face of the earth.  But we use “heaven” to mean the place where God is.  We have given up the idea that God is actually in the sky.

So where is God?  Where is this place called heaven?  Where is it that Jesus actually went when he ascended into the sky to be with the Father?  It may be a beautiful thing to study God’s creation, to know and understand the solar system and the galaxy and the universe as much as we do.  But our science requires a spiritual maturity of us that is more than many of us actually have.  We can no longer just say that God is in the sky and leave it at that.  We have to go to the next level.

So the answer is this:  We don’t know where Jesus actually is.  In asking a seemingly simple like “Where is heaven?” we suddenly find ourselves amidst things that do not and cannot understand.  We know that Jesus ascended into heaven.  And that was Jesus in an actual, physical body.  He didn’t shed his human body when he returned to the Father, as if it were a problem for God to be human.  Jesus is fully human, and his body is simply a part of him.  But where it is we simply haven’t been told.  God seems to think that it was enough to give us the symbol of ascending into heaven.  That is, Jesus went to be with God the Father.

Now that presents us with a problem.  It’s one thing to say that Jesus has a body and we don’t know where it is.  But how do we imagine that?  To be absolutely frank, most of us don’t.  We proceed as though Jesus just isn’t here anymore.  We can’t think of him as being in the sky, looking down on us.  So we ignore him completely, or we fall into thinking about him as some sort of disembodied ghost, who has no direct influence on anything in our lives, except maybe to make us feel better when we need a pick-me-up.  Either he’s no longer present to us, or he’s no longer fully human, because he has no body.

I would guess that the vast majority of Christians in the western world have fallen into one or the other of those two habits of thought.  And neither of them is acceptable.  They are both sub-Christian.  They are both heretical.

I would love to have an easy solution to this problem.  But I don’t.  There is simply no way around it.  The message of Ascension Day is that Jesus went in his physical human nature to be with the Father, who is pure spirit.  Jesus is always present to us through the Holy Spirit, but he is also completely human.  And we must stop relating to him as if he weren’t really here, or weren’t really a person.  He is as real to us as the food he provides us, and he is as present to us as other people with whom we live.  It’s time to start a relationship with him, because he is real and he is with us.

Fifth Sunday of Easter

“These men who have turned the world upside down …”  That’s the way the Thessalonian Jews describe the Christians.  Certainly, it must have looked like that to them.  The Messiah be cursed and killed and then rise from the dead?  How can that be?  You’re upsetting our neat orderly little ways of thinking and doing things.  Aside from this, by the way, they were probably upsetting the community power structure and pecking order.  Mixing up the Jews and Gentiles, drawing away support from the complacent establishment leaders.

So Paul and Silas have certainly turned the complainers’ world upside down.  But actually, their world was upside down to begin with.  So, in another sense, it would be more accurate to say that Paul and Silas turned the world right side up.

If these Thessalonians had been obedient to the word of God to begin with, they would not have had such a problem.  The Beroeans were more obedient about their faith.  They studied the scripture themselves to see whether what Paul said conformed to what God had said.  They trusted God to reveal his will through the scripture.  And as long as what Paul said fit with what God said, they trusted him.  It was that simple.

St. Peter also draws out this connection between trust and obedience.  Remember that “believe” and “trust” are the same word in Greek.  So “To you therefore who believe (trust), [Jesus] is precious, but for those who do not trust, ‘The very stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner,’ and ‘A stone that will make men stumble, … for they stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.”  Another translation would be, “for they stumble at the word, because they disobey.”  They are destined to disobey, not because God pre-destined them, but because they have no faith.  They cannot obey without trust.

So what obedience is God calling us to in faith?

St. Peter, again:  “Put away all malice and all guile and hypocrisy and jealousy and all evil talk about others.”  I must confess to you that I am a man very much inclined to malice, guile, hypocrisy, jealousy, and evil talk about others.  And I’m even a pretty good guy.  But there’s something in me, and I think in you, that harbors these tendencies.  Let’s face it.  We like having malice toward our enemies, we don’t always want to deal with the consequences of speaking the truth, we want what other people have, and we enjoy sharing our little denigrating thoughts about other people.

But St. Peter says no.  You who have tasted that the Lord himself is good and kind, long for that kind of purity in your own being.  Desire unadulterated food that will wash your internal system clean of all that wickedness.

For we can be like our Lord.  Indeed we are like him, in that we have been chosen to serve God.  Jesus is the “living stone, rejected by men but in God’s sight chosen and precious.”  And we also are to be “living stones … built into a spiritual house.”  Stop and think about the image for a moment.  You know what happens to stones in buildings, right?  They get cut and squared and shaped until there is nothing left that is not in the builder’s design.  But then they’re built up into something that far surpasses their own little part of the structure.

But that’s not all.  We are to be living stones, in a spiritual house.  As God cuts away all our rough edges and mortars us together, we are actually growing into what we are meant to be:  a dwelling place for the Holy Spirit.

We usually think of Jesus as a carpenter.  But the word in Greek is more general.  It means a builder in wood or stone.  Everything from chairs and tables to houses to palaces … to temples.  Those people who think they are the builders will always reject Jesus.  They will stumble over him, because they are faithless and disobedient, and he is the true builder.  And he is also the foundation stone of our whole structure.

He says, “Let not your hearts be troubled.  Trust in me.  I am the way, the truth, and the life.  Look!  I have already done great things.  I brought this motley bunch at Holy Nativity together, didn’t I?”  We were once not a people, just like that crew in the synagogue at Thessalonica.  They and we all had our own healthy serving of malice, guile, hypocrisy, envy, and slander.  That’s no people.  It’s just a bunch of lonely, desperate individuals running around, regardless of how organized the running around looks.

But the difference for us is that Jesus has sprung the trap.  We may still be struggling with all that filth in ourselves.  But we know that we are being hewn and squared and mortared by the master builder from Nazareth.  We know that we are a chosen people (The Greek says literally “an eclectic people.), a royal priesthood (chosen to rule with Christ and serve as a dwelling for the presence of the living God), a holy nation, a people for His possession.

We were once no people, but now we are God’s own people, that we may proclaim the wonderful deeds of him who called us out of darkness into his amazing light.  As we are built into a dwelling place for God among us, we proclaim, or show forth, or tell out, not only the great works of God, but also his virtues, his character which is beyond reproach.  And we do this not only by talking about it, but by growing into that character ourselves.  He has called us out of the darkness in which he found each of us, stones buried in the ground away from the light, and he has called us into the searing, amazing brightness of the light of his presence.  All of our imperfections and rough edges show up in that light.  But that’s OK, because we are being shaped by the master builder himself.

Jesus says, “Trust me.  I know it’s painful.  But trust me.  I am building you into something so beautiful you will be amazed.  Trust me.”

Fourth Sunday of Easter

Our first reading today begins with a very practical problem within the body of believers in Jerusalem.  You see, there was an ethnic division in that church, just as there is in ours.  There were Hebrew Aramaic speakers, and there were Jews from the Hellenistic world, whose first language was Greek.  There was also a distribution of food every day to the widows, those who didn’t have the means to feed themselves.  But the job of distributing that food had gotten too big, and the Greek speaking widows weren’t really getting their share.

So the apostles get together and make a decision.  They decide that the Hellenists are right about the injustice.  But they also see clearly that in order to do the job right, they will have to abandon the things that they are really called by God to do, which is pray, study, preach, and teach.  So they say, “Look guys, choose seven men to do this job, so that we can get back to our original mission.  We’re going to devote ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the word.  But let’s get the distribution done right.”

The choice of these seven men has often been seen as the origin of the office of deacon in the church.  The apostles lay hands on them and pray for them as they begin this new responsibility for the very first program in the Church.  But they don’t seem to be chosen for their business acumen or organizational ability.  The only qualifications that are mentioned refer to Stephen, who was “a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit”.  Later on, Philip the Deacon will be the one to explain Isaiah to the Ethiopian eunuch on the road and baptize him.  So those who are chosen to lead the church’s programs should also be able to be spiritual leaders and examples.

Stephen himself becomes the perfect example of this in the following passage.  Stephen is the first Christian martyr.  At least he is the first Christian to die for proclaiming his faith.  The word martyr simply means “witness”.  When Jesus says, “You will be my witnesses … to the ends of the earth”, the word there in the Greek is “martyr”.  So we are all called to be martyrs, in a sense.  But in English, the word martyr has developed to refer specifically to those who go to their death as witnesses for Jesus.  And Stephen is the first to do that.

But Stephen isn’t just hunted down because he is a believer in Jesus.  He is a powerful witness even before there is any question of death.  He is filled with God’s grace and God’s power, so that he is the conduit for great miracles.  He lives in the power of the Holy Spirit, as we all should.  And because he lives that way, everywhere he goes, he brings evidence of the truth of what he believes.  He is a witness, in the truest sense, a martyr, just as we should be.

Now our reading skips around a bit, and there is much more to the story than what we have read.  Stephen’s speech is much longer, for one thing.  But we’ve got the gist of it.  The problem with being a good witness to the truth is that you attract resistance.  Think about it.  When we learn the truth about Jesus, we have to change our behavior.  We have to change our lives.  We have to rearrange our priorities.  We have to repent of our sins.  None of us like any of those things.  Normally, we don’t want to change or repent.  We don’t like being confronted with our sins.  It’s normal to get defensive when someone points them out to us.  And when someone is really good at showing us the truth, when someone is a good witness, as Stephen was, we can react pretty strongly.

So they haul Stephen into court.  They accuse him falsely of blasphemy.  And this is the moment of truth.  How will Stephen respond in court to the false charges?  His life is on the line.  He could simply deny the charges, although it’s hard to prove that you didn’t do something when other people are saying you did.  He could beg for mercy.  He could take a number of approaches.  But he doesn’t do any of that.  He simply continues to be a witness for Jesus.

He launches into a long speech that essentially retells the history of God’s chosen people.  And at every turn, he points out how the people have never wholeheartedly turned toward God.  There have always been those who loved God and obeyed God.  But there have also always been a majority who dishonored and disobeyed God.  And Stephen points out that his own day is no exception.  They had even killed the Son of God himself.

You see, no one can receive God’s mercy without first accepting his own need for mercy.  We have to understand that we are wicked before we can accept the remedy of repentance and the sacrifice of Jesus for us on the cross.  So even as he is being falsely accused, Stephen is making a last ditch effort to reach through the hard-heartedness of his listeners.  He is doing the most loving thing that he can do, which is to present them with the truth of their wickedness in no uncertain terms.  I don’t have nearly the grace or power of Stephen, but I try to operate on the same principal when I say hard things to you, whether that’s from the pulpit or at other times.

Well, it wasn’t a strategy that was designed to win the court case.  It was a strategy that was designed to love the people.  And those strategies often put us in the path of more resistance.  Stephen is taken out and stoned to death.  But his death is the first small seed planted in the heart of a young man named Saul.  It didn’t turn his heart right away.  Saul still condoned the murder of Stephen.  But it was the first step toward Saul’s meeting with Jesus on his way to persecute more Christians in Damascus.  And the same Saul became the apostle to the gentiles all around the Mediterranean.  Such is the way of love and martyrdom, to which we are all called.  It often doesn’t’t do us any earthly good at all.  But it furthers God’s kingdom, and puts us on the path to true life with Jesus.  May we all emulate Stephen’s faithfulness in witnessing to Jesus, so that we may all live with him in love eternally.

Third Sunday of Easter

My usual custom on Mother’s Day is to remind everyone that it is good to honor our mothers all the time and that we should not need Hallmark to make us do it, but that it has nothing to do with our Church Calendar.  But today, I would like to depart from my usual custom and take a different approach.

Most of us will be honoring our mothers today.  We will take them to lunch or go to see them at home if possible.  Some of us will have to make long distance phone calls today.  Many of us have purchased greeting cards or mailed a note.  All of this is good and right and proper.

But the real question is whether we honor our mothers in an ongoing way.  Our mothers were the ones through whom God gave us life.  They nurtured us for years.  In many cases, they gave up their own dreams and aspirations so that we could pursue ours.  Some of them sacrificed themselves to give us a good start in life.  They were the ones who tried to make sure we would become the kind of people who would do well in the world we would enter as adults.

Now there are some who will either ignore Mother’s Day altogether, and we probably feel that that is a dastardly way to behave.  But, even worse, there are many others who will keep the holy rites of Mother’s Day only to cover up the fact that they refuse to truly honor their mothers on any other day.

So, I know you’re now wondering what this is all about.  Why is Fr. Garrin rambling on about something that has nothing to do with what we’ve read in the scripture today?  Well, first of all, it really is important to honor our mothers (as well as our fathers, though that gets short shrift these days).  But I would also like to remind you of St. Augustine’s famous rule:  that he who would have God as his Father must have the Church as his mother.

And here it gets even stickier, doesn’t it?  If we have often made a mess of honoring our actual mothers, we have even more often made a mess of honoring our Holy Mother Church.  She is the one through whom we receive the blessings and the grace of God, for free.  She has set us on the path of life.  She has nurtured us, so that we are able to grow into mature human beings.  She gives us the sacraments.  She gives us teaching.  She gives us the word of God.  She gives and gives and gives.  And we take and take and take.

What would it look like if we actually honored our mother, the Church?  I think it would look a whole lot like the way the first Christians behaved in the book of Acts.  After the three thousand souls were added to the assembly on the day of Pentecost, how did they behave?  “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”  And we have all promised the continue in that devotion, in our Baptismal vows that we repeat every time someone gets baptized.

To what did they devote themselves?  First of all, it was the teaching of the apostles.  They committed themselves to what the apostles taught.  How do we know today what the apostles taught?  It’s the New Testament.  That’s the teaching of the apostles.  And the New Testament itself commends the Old Testament as the foundation for understanding the New Testament.  So the first thing to which we have all promised to devote ourselves is the Bible, as the teaching of the apostles.

There are so many ways in which we have broken that promise.  But maybe I should just say this:  If we are truly devoted to the teaching of the apostles, then we should be studying it regularly in some capacity.  The Bible should be part of our daily lives, not just something that sits on a shelf so that someone else can read it to us on Sunday.  Whole generations of our forefathers learned to read, just so that they could read this book.  We dishonor our mother Church when we ignore it.

Second, they devoted themselves to the fellowship.  We’ve taken that word and turned it into a “nice” word.  Fellowship.  It means having coffee and donuts together, or maybe having a drink together and telling a few jokes.  Sometimes it means actually having dinner together.  How about that!  But the word here means much more than that.  The word is koinonia.  It is also translated “communion”.  And it refers to the connection we have as being all members of one Body.  It means sharing our lives, because they are all part of one life, the life of Jesus that he shares in communion with the Father and the Holy Spirit.  In this kind of fellowship “having all things in common” might very well develop naturally.  That’s a lot more than what we usually teach as the standard of discipleship, which is the tithe.  And yet no one has to tell anyone to do it.  It’s interesting that, later on, it seems clear the apostles didn’t ever require anyone to sell their property and give the proceeds to the church.  It just happened, because they devoted themselves to the fellowship, the sharing of their lives.  How devoted are we to that?

Thirdly, they devoted themselves “to the breaking of bread”.  This isn’t just hanging out and eating together, although that’s not a bad idea.  This is the Eucharist, the common meal that binds us together in Christ’s body and blood, the pinnacle of our fellowship.  We do a little better at this one.  We’ve attenuated this one to about an hour a week, so that we can get on with our real lives, but at least we do it.  But then we hear about the Eucharistic services of other countries.  In Africa, a service is considered short if it’s not at least three hours long.  And that doesn’t even include a whole meal, which would have been included in the early church.  People sometimes walk for miles just to get to these gatherings.  It should make us ashamed of those times when we just don’t quite make it to church.

And finally, they devoted themselves “to the prayers.”  These were probably originally the daily prayers in the Temple.  The point is that they were in prayer together every day.  Not just when something painful or scary happened, but every day.  How do we do at being in prayer every day?

We’ve all made the promise to continue in these practices, to hold fast in these practices, to devote ourselves to these things.  If we wish to honor our mother Church for all the blessings she has poured out upon us, then we will do these things; we will arrange our lives in this order.  I understand that we all fall down on our promises sometimes.  I fall down on my promises sometimes, too.  But do we really want to be the kind of people who remember our mother every once in a while and go through the motions of honoring her?  Or do we want to be the sort of people who remember and honor our mother every moment of every day, being the people that she raised us to be, and following the way that she has taught us?

Easter Sunday

On Friday, some of us were here to remember the victory of God in Jesus on the cross.  It’s counterintuitive, isn’t it?  The sacrifice is the victory.  Today is merely a vindication.  Jesus doesn’t accomplish anything today.  He simply is who he is:  the victorious, eternal Son of God.

But the women who went to the tomb on that early morning after the Sabbath, those women didn’t understand that.  They were coming to pay their last respects to their master, who was dead.  They were going to embalm a dead body.

How many of you have come here today like those women 2000 years ago, to embalm a dead body?  Of course we’re not sad like they were.  We’re happy.  Easter is a joyful time.  But how many of you are here to pay respect to something that no longer has any bearing on your life?

We have heard that God is dead.  In many and various ways we have heard that God’s church is dead.  But to paraphrase Sam Clemens, the reports of our demise are very greatly exaggerated.  Almost 2000 years ago, Jesus’ followers found his tomb open and empty.  For almost 2000 years since, people have been trying to roll that stone back across the opening and pretend that the tomb isn’t empty.  And for almost 2000 years, it hasn’t worked.  Because there is no intellectually honest way to get around the historical fact of the empty tomb.  No one has been able to refute it.

That being the case, we have to take this man, Jesus, and his followers seriously.  There isn’t just a dead body to attend to here.  There is a living God, a Lord and Master.  We are not our own.  We belong to him.  And everything we are and everything we have is at his beck and call.

If we continue to live our lives as if none of this were true, then we are spitting in the face of the one who will judge the living and the dead.  He’s dealt with it before, and he forgives us in the very act of doing it.  But it won’t get us anywhere.

On the other hand, if we will even try to submit to his will, then he is more than ready to bless us.  He’s more than ready to give us the gift of our true selves.  He’s more than ready to give us what is the very best for us, but that we would never have thought to ask for ourselves.

If you’re here to embalm a dead body, then there’s nothing here for you.  But if you’re here to submit to a living master, we have for you here real life.

Good Friday

We talk a lot about the Cross and Passion of Christ.  It is the central doctrine of our faith.  Without the Cross there is no salvation, and the whole idea of Christianity crumbles into oblivion.  But it is not merely a necessary doctrine, something to be studied and expounded.  It is not merely an object of scholarly debate, or even an idea to venerate.  The Passion and crucifixion of our Lord was a real physical event in history, by which we know the measure of God’s love for us.

In the ancient world under Roman rule, everyone knew what crucifixion was.  Many had seen it.  It was the public execution of the worst criminals.  It was the reminder to a subject people of the wrath of Rome.  And it was a humiliating spectacle of Rome’s might and Rome’s resolve.  The Gospel writers don’t need to give much description of the event, because everyone understands it.  But we are two millennia away from the events, so we are not so intimately familiar with Roman practice.  It has become a hazy thing, this crucifixion idea.  So every so often we need to remind ourselves of the actual experience of Jesus, what he went through for us.

For Jesus, it began in the garden last night.  As he was praying in anticipation of the events of today, the stress of it broke capillaries in his skin, and he sweated blood.  His closest friends cannot stay awake with him as he undergoes this agony.  But worse is yet to come.

After allowing himself to be betrayed and taken into custody, he was flogged by the Romans.  The whips used for this task probably had some sort of metal on them to tear the flesh.  By the end of this ordeal, Jesus’ back (at least) would have been a shredded mass of open wound.  Then the soldiers put on him the purple cloak and the crown of thorns, making him bleed from the head.  The blood clotting on his wounded back would have congealed in the cloak, sticking it to his back.  Then they took off the cloak and crown, reopening the wounds on his back, as the cloak tore away the clotted blood.

By this time, Jesus was dealing with an enormous amount of pain, loss of blood, and probably shock.  But Roman soldiers have ways of keeping the most reluctant prisoner going.  Then they heaved up onto this mutilated back the cross that would hold him up on the hill.  And they made him carry it until he just couldn’t do it anymore.

When they got to the place of crucifixion, they placed metal spikes through his wrists and ankles, probably.  The spikes would have pierced between his sinews and bones to anchor him to the wood.  He lost a little more blood in this process.  But the loss of blood wasn’t enough to kill him.  That’s the bad thing about crucifixion.  You don’t bleed to death on a cross.

The stretch of the arms back and above the head constricts the lungs, making it difficult to get a decent breath.  So Jesus had to push up on the spike through his ankles and pull up on the spikes through his wrists, dragging his mutilated back along the rough wood, in order to get a breath.  Then the agony caused by this exertion forced him back down to hang limply again.  Most people die of asphyxiation on a cross.  But not until they simply cannot get themselves up to take a breath.

Jesus went through this torturous cycle of breathing periodically, just as all crucified men do.  But he must have made a particular effort every time he spoke or cried out, just for the breath to do so.  In the meantime, his blood flow was irregular, and he was dehydrated.  His nervous system was failing by this time, probably causing the muscles in his arms, shoulders, and back to convulse irregularly.  This could sometimes go on for days before death.  That’s why they broke the legs of the two criminals who were crucified at the same time.  The sun was going down, and the Jews didn’t want the ordeal to go on through the Sabbath.  The broken legs would have brought on asphyxiation more quickly, as the tortured muscles of the arms fail and cannot be used to pull up for a breath.

But after a few hours, Jesus had already died.  He didn’t die from loss of blood.  Nor did he die of asphyxiation, since he cried out just before he died.  Just to make sure he was dead, they pierced his side with a spear.  Doctors who have studied the crucifixion tell us that the blood and water that came out of the spear wound together are the clue to the cause of Jesus’ death.  It seems the mixed blood and water is a sign that his heart burst from the strain of it all.  Jesus died of a broken heart.

All this really happened.  It was a real man, on a real piece of wood, with real spikes in his real flesh.  Not some abstract nice idea, crucifixion.  It was on that piece of wood that the almighty, eternal second person of the Holy Trinity put himself on a collision course with the entire weight of the evil that is in us.  The evil came barreling through history, picking up momentum like an avalanche, pain and injustice begetting more pain and injustice, until it was almost impossible even to discern justice anymore.  And he set himself to meet it, threw his physical body in its path, and absorbed it into himself, breaking his heart.  That piece of wood on which he hung is the greatest battlefield of history.  Our evil collided with the sheer corporeal love of God.  And he defeated it by allowing it to crush him.

None of this happened by chance.  None of this happened to Jesus.  He chose it.  That is how much God loves us.  And that is how much we owe him.  If we are to join him, we also will choose to be crushed.  So that we can finally join him in his Resurrection.

Sermon for Maundy Thursday

At the Last Supper, Jesus astounds his disciples.  He astounds them because he is their master, yet he takes on the role of a menial servant, a slave.  They don’t know how to deal with this person who breaks their social conventions.  He doesn’t behave as they expect him to, and that causes anxiety for them.

Still, they take him seriously.  Through the chaos of the next few days, and the joy that comes after, they will forge an understanding of their Lord’s actions on this night.  They will come to see that this symbolic act of Jesus in washing their feet and feeding them with his own body and blood is central to their lives in him.  They take Jesus’ words to heart when he says, “You call me teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am.  If I then, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.”  By the second century Christians were especially known for the way they loved and served each other, as opposed to the pagans, who were simply expected to use one another for their own purposes.

But Jesus’ actions go far beyond the obvious.  Looking back on the Last Supper with St. John, we have the benefit of his hindsight.  Much can be said, and rightly so, about the role of the leader as a servant.  Much can be said, and rightly so, about the call of all disciples of Jesus to love one another and serve one another.  But look at the whole event, and see how this night is where it all comes together.  It turns out that Jesus’ love for and service to his disciples is directly connected to his lordship, which is connected to his sacrifice and suffering, which is connected to the glory of God revealed in that suffering, which is connected to the betrayal that he experiences.  Jesus didn’t just wash Peter’s feet.  He washed the feet of all his disciples.  Even Judas.  Especially Judas.

And we are all called to follow in the way of the cross, this same path of love, authority, service, betrayal, crucifixion.  We are called to love and serve not only those who disagree with us, but those who betray us.  That doesn’t ever mean that evil is cheaply papered over.  It doesn’t necessarily mean that reconciliation of relationships is possible.  Peter never reconciled with Judas.  The Gospel writers have a few choice words about Judas, words that are just and godly.  But none of that can ever change the fact that Jesus washed his feet.  It can never change the fact that Jesus went to the cross for us, even before we were ready to repent.

We have fallen far from the days of the early Christians who understood all this, haven’t we?  We live more like the pagans than the Christians.  We are more like Judas than like Peter.  And I don’t exempt myself from that accusation.

I am a very poor servant of a very great master.  Jesus washes feet as an example to his disciples.  I wash feet to remind myself that I am not greater than my master.  Jesus is rightly the master, but becomes a servant out of love.  I am rightly the slave, but am given responsibility over the master’s household.  Jesus serves willingly, even when he is contradicted, persecuted, and killed.  I serve under constraint.  Jesus didn’t strike back, except when it was the loving thing to do.  When you kick me, I just want to kick back.  I never serve perfectly, and usually not very well.  And when you hurt me and reject me, I find it even more difficult.

But I represent the master here, however poorly.  He suffered betrayal from his disciples.  So I sometimes suffer betrayal from his disciples too.  He washed his disciples’ feet.  So I wash his disciples’ feet too.  I do it well when I am able.  I do it poorly when I must, because it is worth doing.

But I am not the only one with this task.  You are all called to the same path of suffering and service.  We forgive betrayal.  We wash each others feet.  We lay down our lives for each other.  We do it well when we can.  We do it poorly when we must.  We desire what is best for all people, as far as our Lord gives us the strength.  And it may or may not be that we are able to reconcile with those who have wronged us.  But the good news is that each time any of us offer ourselves to suffer for the sake of Jesus, we are drawn further into the power and glory of his kingdom.

Sermon for Palm Sunday, Year A

The Palm Sunday service always gives you a workout. We start with the triumphant procession into Jerusalem, waving Palms and crying, “Hosanna to the Son of David!”. And then we end up crying, “Let him be crucified!”. We play a role in both of these dramas, because we find both of these reactions in ourselves.

When Jesus rides into Jerusalem on the donkey, he is sending a clear signal. In fact, he was not the only person ever to do this. Other people who claimed to be the Messiah did the same thing, because the verse from Zechariah was understood to be a Messianic prophecy. “Lo, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on the foal of an ass.” Jesus is proclaiming for all to hear, “I am the one! I am here!  And it is time to save God’s people!”

And the crowd understands this. They don’t shout, “Hosanna to the great teacher who works miracles!” No, they shout, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” And who is the Son of David?  Messiah, the anointed king who will deliver God’s people and drive out their oppressors.

Jesus even begins well, by the crowd’s standards. As Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell the story, the first thing he does after this is to drive the oppressing money changers out of the temple. He has come as a conquering king to his rightful inheritance. And he will set things in order.

But the distance between “Hosanna!” and “Crucify him!” is not very far. Why do the people turn against him within the week? Why do we turn against our Lord who saves us?  St. Matthew gives us a hint. When the other people in the city ask, “Who is this?” the people singing his praises answer, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth.”

Now prophet is not the same thing as Lord, even if we’re still thinking in terms of a merely human Lord. The Lord requires allegiance. The Lord requires obedience.  The Lord need not do what you want him to do the way you want him to do it. Instead, you are required to conform yourself to his way.

So Jesus goes into Jerusalem, drives the money changers out of the temple, heals the sick, and argues with the scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees. That’s all great, but where’s the beef? Where’s the coup attempt? Where’s the Jewish state? Where’s the solution to all my problems?

We so often want Jesus to save us from everything “out there”. But Jesus came to save us from everything “in here”, in ourselves. We want him to fix our circumstances, and instead he tries to fix us. He starts to overturn all of our carefully controlled and managed lives. He requires us to change and to do whatever he asks, rather than fulfilling our own desires and confirming our way of doing things. And “Hosanna!” turns to “Crucify him!” in a heartbeat.

But Jesus is not daunted by our petty revolts. He does what he came to do.  Because he is God, he does not need to grasp at power or authority. Instead, he empties himself of divine power. He who requires obedience of us is himself obedient all the way to death in a slave’s execution. He who could have simply unmade the world in an instant instead offers himself as the means to remake it.

We are without excuse. If Jesus can give up the very splendor and omnipotence of being God to die on the cross for us, then we can certainly allow him to help us give up our own petty ambitions and desires in order to live with him.