Monthly Archives: March 2018

Good Friday 2018: N.T. Wright Muses on the Cross

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Read Matthew 27.33-56

As you stand there [before the cross] in this strange, powerful mixture of recognition and horror, bring bit by bit into the picture the stories on which you have lived. Bring the hopes you had when you were young. Bring the bright vision of family life, of success in sport or work or art, the dreams of exciting adventures in far-off places. Bring the joy of seeing a new baby, full of promise and possibility. Bring the longings of your heart. They are all fulfilled here, though not in the way you imagined. This is the way God fulfilled the dreams of his people. This is how the coming king would overcome all his enemies.

Or bring the fears and sorrows you had when you were young. The terror of violence, perhaps at home. The shame of failure at school, of rejection by friends. The nasty comments that hurt you then and hurt you still. The terrible moment when you realized a wonderful relationship had come to an end. The sudden, meaningless death of someone you loved very much. They are all fulfilled here, too. God has taken them upon himself, in the person of his Son. This is the earthquake moment, the darkness-at-noon moment, the moment of terror and sudden faith, as even the hard-boiled Roman soldier blurts out at the end. (Don’t forget that ‘Son of God’ was a regular title claimed by Caesar, his boss.)

But then bring the hopes and sorrows of the world. Bring the millions who are homeless because of flood or famine. Bring the children orphaned by AIDS or war. Bring the politicians who begin by longing for justice and end up hoping for bribes. Bring the beautiful and fragile earth on which we live. Think of God’s dreams for his creation, and God’s sorrow at its ruin.

—Wright, T. (2011). Lent for Everyone: Matthew Year A (pp. 137–138). London: SPCK.

Let us pray.

Almighty Father,
look with mercy on this your family
for which our Lord Jesus Christ was content to be betrayed
and given up into the hands of sinners
and to suffer death upon the cross;
who is alive and glorified with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Fr. Terry Gatwood: Servant to All

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Sermon delivered on Maundy Thursday B, March 29, 2018, at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH.

Father Gatwood has regressed and forgotten how to write. There is no text for tonight’s sermon. Click here to listen to the audio podcast of the sermon.

Lectionary texts: Exodus 12.1-14; Psalm 116: 1, 10-17; 1 Corinthians 11.23-26; John 13.1-13, 31b-35. Gospel of the Watch: Matthew 26.30-75.

Maundy Thursday 2018: St. Thomas Offers a Reflection on the Eucharist

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The happy commemoration of today’s feast with its immense concourse of people invites us to prolong fervently our praises of the Most Holy Body of Christ. What could be sweeter, what more pleasing to the heart of the faithful than to exalt the abyss of his divine charity, and to glorify the overflowing torrent of his love! At the table of the new grace the hand of the priest distributes ceaselessly his Flesh as food and his precious Blood as drink, to those who are his children and heirs of the kingdom promised by God to those who love him.

O endless Emanation of the goodness of God and of his immense love for us, admirable and worthy of all praise! In this sacrament, where all former sacrifices are done away with, he remains with us to the end of the world; he feeds the children of adoption with the bread of angels and inebriates them with filial love.

This is the food and drink for the elect, living bread and spiritual nourishment, remedy for daily weaknesses! It is the table which Christ has prepared for his friends and guests, like the one the father prepared for his son on the day of his return, to replace the symbolic lamb. This is the Passover in which the victim immolated is Christ; 0 Christ our Passover, you want us too to pass over from vice to virtue; as once you delivered the Jews, so now you set us free in spirit. You are the food that satisfies all but the most hardened; food that is eaten by faith, tasted by fervor, assimilated by charity. 0 viaticum of our pilgrimage, you lead travelers to the height of virtue. Confirm my heart in good, assure it in the paths of life, give joy to my soul, purify my thoughts.

The Eucharist is bread, real bread; we eat it without consuming or dividing it; it converts but itself is not changed; it gives strength without ever losing it; it gives perfection and suffices for salvation; it gives life, it confers grace, it remits sins. It is the food of souls, a food which enlightens the intelligence of the faithful, inflames their hearts, purifies them from their shortcomings, elevates their desires.

O chalice that holy souls love to drink of, chalice of fervor, chalice changed into the Blood of Christ, to seal the new Alliance, withdraw us the old leaven, fill our souls with yourself, that we may become a new paste and that we may go to the feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. For the Lamb without spot, who knows no touch or stain of any sin, ought to be eaten with unleavened bread. We should not approach without being cleansed by confession, without having a solid foundation of faith, without being in charity.

Come to the Lord’s supper, if you wish to come to the nuptials of the Lamb; there, we shall be inebriated with the riches of the house of God we shall see the King of glory and the God of hosts in all his beauty, shall eat this bread in the kingdom of the Father.

Thomas Aquinas, Lectionary and Martyrology, 288-289

Maundy Thursday 2018: St. Mark Recounts Maundy Thursday

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On the first day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover lamb is sacrificed, Jesus’ disciples asked him, “Where do you want us to go to prepare the Passover meal for you?”

So Jesus sent two of them into Jerusalem with these instructions: “As you go into the city, a man carrying a pitcher of water will meet you. Follow him. At the house he enters, say to the owner, ‘The Teacher asks: Where is the guest room where I can eat the Passover meal with my disciples?’ He will take you upstairs to a large room that is already set up. That is where you should prepare our meal.” So the two disciples went into the city and found everything just as Jesus had said, and they prepared the Passover meal there.

In the evening Jesus arrived with the Twelve. As they were at the table eating, Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, one of you eating with me here will betray me.”

Greatly distressed, each one asked in turn, “Am I the one?”

He replied, “It is one of you twelve who is eating from this bowl with me. For the Son of Man must die, as the Scriptures declared long ago. But how terrible it will be for the one who betrays him. It would be far better for that man if he had never been born!”

As they were eating, Jesus took some bread and blessed it. Then he broke it in pieces and gave it to the disciples, saying, “Take it, for this is my body.”

And he took a cup of wine and gave thanks to God for it. He gave it to them, and they all drank from it. And he said to them, “This is my blood, which confirms the covenant between God and his people. It is poured out as a sacrifice for many. I tell you the truth, I will not drink wine again until the day I drink it new in the Kingdom of God.”

Then they sang a hymn and went out to the Mount of Olives.

On the way, Jesus told them, “All of you will desert me. For the Scriptures say,

‘God will strike the Shepherd,
    and the sheep will be scattered.’

But after I am raised from the dead, I will go ahead of you to Galilee and meet you there.”

Peter said to him, “Even if everyone else deserts you, I never will.”

Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, Peter—this very night, before the rooster crows twice, you will deny three times that you even know me.”

“No!” Peter declared emphatically. “Even if I have to die with you, I will never deny you!” And all the others vowed the same.

They went to the olive grove called Gethsemane, and Jesus said, “Sit here while I go and pray.” He took Peter, James, and John with him, and he became deeply troubled and distressed. He told them, “My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”

He went on a little farther and fell to the ground. He prayed that, if it were possible, the awful hour awaiting him might pass him by. “Abba, Father,” he cried out, “everything is possible for you. Please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.”

Then he returned and found the disciples asleep. He said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Couldn’t you watch with me even one hour? Keep watch and pray, so that you will not give in to temptation. For the spirit is willing, but the body is weak.”

Then Jesus left them again and prayed the same prayer as before. When he returned to them again, he found them sleeping, for they couldn’t keep their eyes open. And they didn’t know what to say.

When he returned to them the third time, he said, “Go ahead and sleep. Have your rest. But no—the time has come. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Up, let’s be going. Look, my betrayer is here!”

And immediately, even as Jesus said this, Judas, one of the twelve disciples, arrived with a crowd of men armed with swords and clubs. They had been sent by the leading priests, the teachers of religious law, and the elders. The traitor, Judas, had given them a prearranged signal: “You will know which one to arrest when I greet him with a kiss. Then you can take him away under guard.” As soon as they arrived, Judas walked up to Jesus. “Rabbi!” he exclaimed, and gave him the kiss.

Then the others grabbed Jesus and arrested him. But one of the men with Jesus pulled out his sword and struck the high priest’s slave, slashing off his ear.

Jesus asked them, “Am I some dangerous revolutionary, that you come with swords and clubs to arrest me? Why didn’t you arrest me in the Temple? I was there among you teaching every day. But these things are happening to fulfill what the Scriptures say about me.”

Then all his disciples deserted him and ran away. One young man following behind was clothed only in a long linen shirt. When the mob tried to grab him, he slipped out of his shirt and ran away naked.

They took Jesus to the high priest’s home where the leading priests, the elders, and the teachers of religious law had gathered. Meanwhile, Peter followed him at a distance and went right into the high priest’s courtyard. There he sat with the guards, warming himself by the fire.

Inside, the leading priests and the entire high council were trying to find evidence against Jesus, so they could put him to death. But they couldn’t find any. Many false witnesses spoke against him, but they contradicted each other. Finally, some men stood up and gave this false testimony: “We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this Temple made with human hands, and in three days I will build another, made without human hands.’” But even then they didn’t get their stories straight!

Then the high priest stood up before the others and asked Jesus, “Well, aren’t you going to answer these charges? What do you have to say for yourself?” But Jesus was silent and made no reply. Then the high priest asked him, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?”

Jesus said, “I am. And you will see the Son of Man seated in the place of power at God’s right hand and coming on the clouds of heaven.”

Then the high priest tore his clothing to show his horror and said, “Why do we need other witnesses? You have all heard his blasphemy. What is your verdict?”

“Guilty!” they all cried. “He deserves to die!”

Then some of them began to spit at him, and they blindfolded him and beat him with their fists. “Prophesy to us,” they jeered. And the guards slapped him as they took him away.

Meanwhile, Peter was in the courtyard below. One of the servant girls who worked for the high priest came by and noticed Peter warming himself at the fire. She looked at him closely and said, “You were one of those with Jesus of Nazareth.”

But Peter denied it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, and he went out into the entryway. Just then, a rooster crowed.

When the servant girl saw him standing there, she began telling the others, “This man is definitely one of them!” But Peter denied it again.

A little later some of the other bystanders confronted Peter and said, “You must be one of them, because you are a Galilean.”

Peter swore, “A curse on me if I’m lying—I don’t know this man you’re talking about!” And immediately the rooster crowed the second time.

Suddenly, Jesus’ words flashed through Peter’s mind: “Before the rooster crows twice, you will deny three times that you even know me.” And he broke down and wept.

—Mark 14.12-72 (NLT)

Maundy Thursday 2018: N.T. Wright Muses on Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane

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Here is an exquisite devotional piece on Jesus as he prayed in Gethsemane. See what you think (and pick up the book).

Read Mark 14.32-52

Two generations ago, J. B. Phillips (best known for his translation of the New Testament) published a little book called Your God Is Too Small. It was a moving appeal for ordinary Christians to lift up their eyes and imaginations, and to realize that God is not simply a therapist, concerned with the humdrum, day-to-day matters of their personal lives and problems, but is the glorious sovereign of heaven and earth. We all need that kind of reminder on a regular basis.

But there is, perhaps, a more subtle point which needs to be made as well. When people start to get the point about the sovereignty, majesty and glory of the one true God, it is often difficult for them at the same time to glimpse and grasp the real divine greatness which the gospel stories reveal. But if we don’t get this point, as well as the larger one, we will fall back once more into the mistake of James and John, celebrating the greatness of God and hoping that some of that greatness will rub off on us in the usual, worldly sense.

All along in Mark’s book we have seen that Jesus is described as the one who, however surprisingly, is fulfilling the promises that Israel’s God will come back to his people at last, rescuing them and filling the world with his glory. Think back to the opening scene. Here is the preparatory messenger, here is the voice in the wilderness, and now here is the Coming One: my son, my beloved one, the one who makes me glad. Somehow, already, we have to get our heads around what Mark is saying: God promised that he would come back, but the one who’s come is Jesus, and Jesus is hailed by God himself as his beloved son.

Mark offers no theory about how this makes sense. The earliest Christians didn’t theorize: they worshipped. They remained firmly monotheistic: Jesus wasn’t a ‘second god’ added to the one they’d already got. But, somehow, they found that worshipping Jesus and worshipping the one whom Jesus called ‘father’ went together.

We might, as I say, just about be getting our heads and our hearts around this. But the scene we now witness strains this picture in a new way. It offers a whole new dimension of the word ‘God’ itself. Gethsemane stands at the heart of the whole early Christian picture of who God is, and hence of who we ourselves (bearing God’s image) are meant to be. And at the heart of Gethsemane there stands the unforgettable prayer that shows what love really means, the love that passes between father and son, the love that reaches out to this day into the dark places of the world: ‘Abba, father,’ he said, ‘all things are possible for you! Take this cup away from me! But—not what I want, but what you want.’

Not long ago, I heard a church leader declare that with this passage we actually see ‘conflict’ within the Trinity itself. (He was using this idea to justify continuing conflict within the church.) But Gethsemane is not about conflict. It is about love. This is the full, honest interchange of love in which the son lays before the father the true condition of his God-reflecting humanity, caught now in the necessary work of bearing the utter pain and sorrow of the world.

But, people might say, doesn’t this prayer show that Jesus and his father are, as it were, on opposite sides of the equation? Doesn’t it appear that Jesus wants to be released from his obligation, but knows that the father wills it anyway?

Not so fast. What Jesus’ prayer shows is the proper, right, natural reaction of any human being, and particularly the human being who completely reflected the life-giving God, to the dark forces of corruption and death. It shows that as Jesus went to the cross he was not doing it out of a distorted death-wish, a kind of crazy suicide mission. He continued, as one would expect from the life-restoring son of the life-giving father, to resist death with every fibre of his being. His very prayer to be rescued from it displays not a resistance to the father’s will, but a resistance to the forces of evil which result in death. There is no conflict here; only the deepest affirmation of the father’s will in all its aspects.

And now we ask again: is your God this big? Big enough to come and take on the forces of evil and death by dying under their weight and power? There’s a hymn which has a verse beginning, ‘Jesus is Lord! Yet from his throne eternal, in flesh he came to die in shame on Calvary’s tree.’ There is one word there that is wrong. It shouldn’t be ‘yet’. It should be ‘so’. Jesus is Lord, and so, and therefore, he came into the world, came to his own people, came to the place of fear and horror and shame and guilt and evil and darkness and death itself. He came out of love, love for the father, love for the world. That is what Mark’s story is telling us. All the theologians down the centuries have produced formulae to explain this. But it’s all here, in a nutshell, within this astonishing story.

And of course the disciples didn’t get it. First they fall asleep. Then they make a half-baked attempt to defend Jesus. And then—many people think this is Mark’s own signature, a shocking and shaming personal memory—one young man is grabbed by the tunic, so leaves the tunic and runs away naked. That says it all. Humankind, naked and ashamed in the garden, while the snake closes in for the kill. The son of man has arrived at the place where the problem began, to take its full force upon himself.

Today
Lord Jesus, King and Master, help us to watch with you, to stay with you, to learn from your anguish the lessons of love.

—Wright, T. (2012). Lent for Everyone: Mark, Year B (pp. 151-155). London: SPCK.

Passion Sunday: A Most Unusual Day in the Life of a Most Unusual King

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Sermon delivered on the Sunday of the Passion of our Lord (Palm Sunday), year B, at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH.

If you prefer to listen to the audio podcast of today’s sermon, usually somewhat different from the text below, click here.

Lectionary texts: Isaiah 50.4-9a; Psalm 31.9-16; Philippians 2.5-11; Mark 11.1-11, 14.1-15.47.

In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

What are we to make of a celebration like Palm Sunday? It starts in triumph and ends in tragedy. And what does this tell us about Jesus, our Lord and King? Who and what exactly are we celebrating today, and why? This is what I want us to look at briefly this morning.

Palm Sunday is a strange day, is it not? We start in a festive and celebratory mood with palm branches and processions and shouts of God saves (hosannas) and all that. But we end the day in catastrophe, with a crucifixion. We’re all for the first part but not so keen on the second. Given our propensity to focus on the positive and expunge the negative by denying it in our lives, most of us would be perfectly happy to go straight to Easter from the first half of our liturgy this morning. But the ancient liturgical wisdom of the Church won’t let us do that. While most of us call today Palm Sunday, the actual liturgical title for today is The Sunday of the Passion, and with the reading of the full Passion narrative of our Lord Jesus Christ, we are reminded in a painful and compelling way that we don’t get to Easter without first going to Calvary. There can be no Easter without Good Friday and the reading of our Passion narrative provides an in-your-face reminder that our Lord Jesus, the Son of God, God become human, was betrayed, abandoned, condemned, and put to death in the most demeaning and degrading manner ever invented by humans. So what are we to make of all that?

Well, first, there can be no doubt that St. Mark wants us to see that Jesus understood himself to be Israel’s long-promised Messiah, or God’s anointed one. But clearly our Lord saw the role of Messiah differently from that of most of his contemporaries, his chosen twelve included. Most Israelites of Jesus’ day expected the Messiah to do three things when he came. First, the Messiah would free God’s people Israel from their oppression to foreign dominance, in this case the Romans. Second, the Messiah would cleanse the Temple and restore right religious activity there; and third, the Messiah would establish God’s kingdom on earth by ruling as God’s king. And while almost every one of Jesus’ contemporaries expected God to return to his people as God promised, almost no one expected God to do so in the person of the Messiah.

Consistent with God’s promise to return to God’s people to rescue them from their oppression, Jesus chose to act out the prophecy of Zechariah 9.9, entering Jerusalem on a donkey rather than a warhorse. Jesus would indeed come to free God’s people, but not by military force because the Romans weren’t the real enemy. Sin and Evil were (and are). And so Jesus would free us by shedding his blood for us. In other words, as both our OT and epistle lessons make clear, Jesus would free us from our slavery to Sin by his suffering and humble obedience to the will of God. This completely violates our expectations of how an all-powerful God would act on our behalf. Everybody knows that “might makes right” and if God were going to break the power of Sin over us and destroy the forces of evil and their human minions, God would do so by a mighty act of power, just like God did when freeing his people from their slavery in Egypt. This very nature of Jesus’ kingly rule is the first way our expectations about him are violated. We never expected to see God coming to us riding on a donkey or later being nailed to a tree, and St. Mark hints darkly that we are not alone in our violated expectations by suggesting that the rulers and people of Jerusalem were not there to greet Jesus on his arrival to Jerusalem. Instead of cheering crowds, Jesus entered the Temple alone and looked around at everything before he retired to Bethany for the night. There were no crowds, no praise, no enthusiasm for Jesus in Jerusalem, only silence—the silence of the anger we often feel when our deeply-held expectations are violated. Not even the Son of God is off limits to this kind of anger, especially from his contemporaries.

This understanding of the true nature of Jesus’ kingship prepares us to examine St. Mark’s Passion narrative to see how God intends to rescue us from our real enemies, the enemies of Sin and Death, that have enslaved us all. Like all the gospel writers, St. Mark wants us to consider the truth about Jesus and what happened on the cross by telling us his story. Consequently, almost 20 percent of Mark’s gospel (119 out of 678 total verses) is dedicated to the Passion narrative that we just read. We’d better pay attention to that. While we don’t have time to explore all that the evangelist wants to tell us, one thing we can see is that St. Mark invites us to follow Jesus to the foot of his cross, carrying with us all our hurts and fears and anxieties and brokenness and violated expectations about God and God’s will for us, not to mention God’s character and heart. There we will see, perhaps surprisingly and in further violation of our expectations, how God the Father has chosen, with the full agreement and cooperation of God the Son, to rescue us from our slavery to Sin and Death. How so, you ask? I’m glad you do. It will allow me to finish this sermon in a timely manner.

St. Mark (not to mention Isaiah and St. Paul) is inviting us to see and contemplate the love and justice of God being poured out on the cross for us. When we kneel at the foot of the cross, we are reminded of how terribly costly is God’s love for us. The cross did not cost us a thing; it cost God everything. Here we see how a good and loving God chooses to deal the powers of Sin and Evil without destroying us in the process. As we saw two weeks ago, God cannot possibly be a loving and good God if he turns a blind eye to all that is evil and wrong in God’s world. Sin and Evil, along with those who commit them, must be judged and God’s justice must be served. But how can God do that without condemning us for all eternity, given that we are all thoroughly sin-stained with no hope of fixing ourselves? St. Mark gives us the answer in his Passion narrative. The Son of God, God become human, willingly took on the collective weight of our sins and bore them in his body on the tree. As St. Paul tells us in Romans 8.3-4, on the cross, God condemned our sin in the flesh so as to spare us from his just and terrible condemnation. Jesus, in a moment of human weakness, asked to be spared this terrible task, but willingly and obediently took it on out of his great love for us. On the cross we see the Son of God dying a godforsaken and degrading death, naked, exposed, and nailed to a cross to die. We hear his terrible Cry of Dereliction, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and our very hearts are pierced with shame and sorrow knowing that we are watching our Savior die on account of our sins and the evil we commit. As we watch, we are shocked that we are seeing God’s justice being executed in the pierced and bloodied body of our Lord, that God himself is bearing his justice to spare us from having to suffer it. This too is completely unexpected.

So where does this leave us? What does Jesus’ Passion have to offer those of us who live today in an increasingly unhinged world? First, we are invited to see that in Jesus’ death, we are witnessing the turning point in history, even if it is riddled with enigmas, uncertainties, and questions. Note carefully that Jesus asked his Father to take the cup of God’s wrath from him but that his prayers were not answered. Jesus had to go to the cross if we were to be saved. We’ve just looked at why that was necessary but we should consider that this also represents our reality living in a broken and fallen world with all its enigma, uncertainties, and darkness. For example, we see all kinds of violence and injustice and hurt and suffering. We pray for help or relief but no answer comes, at least in the form we desire, and we don’t know what to make of it. We wonder if God really doesn’t care or has abandoned us. Yet the NT is adamant in its insistence that on the cross God defeated the powers of Evil and the power of sin was broken (cf. Colossians 2.15ff). Isn’t St. Mark telling us that Jesus experienced exactly this contradiction in his Passion? Salvation was achieved in the midst of his Cry of Dereliction! There is much we don’t know and much we do not see in God’s good purposes for us. So like Jesus, St. Mark invites us to be obedient to our Lord’s will and to imitate Jesus in his humility, even though we will certainly suffer for doing so, even though there are times in our lives that make us cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Life and our life of faith is anything but cut and dried, but we are rescued nevertheless. Are you ready to follow your Lord Jesus in humble obedience to his good and perfect will for you, even in the face of suffering, death, and uncertainty?

The NT encourages us to answer that question with a resounding yes! Hang on, its writers tell us. Don’t abandon your faith, even in the face of all life’s uncertainties and darkness, even in the midst of your own doubts, sorrows, and fears, because Easter is coming, where we catch a glimpse of the power of death being destroyed forever. But without Good Friday, Easter loses its power because without Good Friday the powers of Sin and Evil remain undefeated. Good Friday needs Easter and Easter needs Good Friday. We will never be able to fully plumb the depths of the meaning of our Lord’s crucifixion, but we are given enough to let us see the love of God poured out for us and to remind us that on the cross, especially in the Cry of Dereliction, we are witnessing the deepest identification of God the Son with our darkest and most profound sorrows and suffering. This is a God worth loving and obeying, my beloved.

All this is why I exhort you to make the story of Holy Week your story first-hand. Come with our Lord to the Upper Room Thursday night where he will give his disciples a meal as the means to help them understand what his impending passion and death is all about. Watch with him in the garden as he struggles and shrinks from the gigantic task of allowing the powers of Evil to do their worst to him, and the prospect of having to bear the judgment of God for the sins of the entire world, your sins and mine. Our own personal sins can be a terrible burden to us. Try to imagine having to bear the sins of the entire world. Come, therefore, and venerate the cross on Good Friday as you ponder and contemplate the death of the Son of God for your sake and the sake of the world. Such contemplation demands silence, desolation, and humility. Was there ever any suffering like our Lord’s (and if you answer no to this question, there’s a good chance you don’t really understand the magnitude of what happened on Good Friday)? Grieve with his first followers as they laid his crucified and dead body in the tomb with no expectation of Easter Sunday. Holy Saturday is the time to do just that, culminating with the Easter Vigil and the reading of the story of God’s salvation on Saturday evening. It simply won’t do to observe any of this from afar. It’s as unedifying as listening to one of Fr. Bowser’s sermons. No, if you really love your Lord and have even an inkling as to what great love has effected your salvation and changed the course of history forever, how can you possibly stay away from our Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Vigil services? Easter Sunday will come with its great joy. But let none of us be too hasty to celebrate the great Paschal Feast without first pondering and agonizing and reflecting on the great and astonishing love of God that flows from God’s very heart as it was pierced by a Roman soldier’s spear. To be sure, it isn’t a pretty or fun thing to do. But if you commit yourself to walking with Jesus this Holy Week it will change you in ways you cannot imagine or envision, and for the good. It will change you because it is the Good News of our salvation, now and for all eternity. May we all observe a holy and blessed Holy Week together as God’s people at St. Augustine’s. To him be honor, praise, and glory forever and ever.

In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

A Prayer for Palm Sunday 2018

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Almighty and everlasting God,
who in your tender love towards the human race
sent your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ
to take upon him our flesh
and to suffer death upon the cross:
grant that we may follow the example of his patience and humility,
and also be made partakers of his resurrection;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Palm Sunday 2018

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He who came down from heaven to raise us from the depths of sin, to raise us to himself, we are told in Scripture: “above every sovereignty, authority and power, and every other name that can be named,” now comes of his own free will to make his journey to Jerusalem. He came without pomp or ostentation. Let us run to accompany him as he hastens toward his passion, and imitate those who met him then, not by covering his path with garments, olive branches or palms, but by doing all we can to prostrate ourselves before him by being humble and by trying to live as he would wish.

—Andrew of Crete, Bishop, Sermon 9 for Palm Sunday

Palm Sunday 2018: N.T. Wright on the Meaning of Palm Sunday

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r1405901_20102708The extraordinary twist in this story is that, having announced judgment upon Jerusalem for refusing God’s way of peace, Jesus went ahead, embodying simultaneously the love and the judgment of God himself, to suffer the Roman horror he had predicted for his people.

That dark royal story lies at the heart of all subsequent Christian understanding of the cross, though it is a truth so strange that few hymns or liturgies plumb its depths. Theseus and Oberon are one and the same. Good Friday, itself a form of Roman street theatre, was taken up paradoxically within God’s street theatre, the play within the play within the play that explains everything else.

But, even without that sequel, the questions of Palm Sunday itself force themselves upon us.

First, the questions of which story we are living in, and which king we are following, remain urgent within our culture. As our public institutions are less trusted than ever, and our behaviour at home and abroad is more confused than ever, the stories which used to make sense of our lives have let us down.

We thought we knew how the play worked: get rid of tyrants, and people will embrace democracy, peace, love and flower-power. How quickly things have moved from Palm Sunday to Good Friday. The so-called Arab Spring has turned back to winter, as we have no idea what to do about Syria, about Israel/Palestine and, of course, about Ukraine. We have run out of stories, we have run out of kings of whatever kind; all we think we can do is trust the great god Mammon, as though our fragile economic half-recoveries would trickle out into the mountains of Syria or the deserts of South Sudan. Give me Psalm 72 any day.

But that’s where the second question comes in, a personal question. If the Palm Sunday street theatre means what Jesus meant, it challenges all his followers, then and now. The crowds may have been fickle, but they were not mistaken. The two on the road to Emmaus had hoped he would redeem Israel, and they were hoping for the right thing – God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven, a this-worldly reign of justice and peace – but they had not glimpsed the means by which Jesus would bring it about. Right story, wrong king.

Sooner or later, this happens to all of us. We start out following Jesus because we think we know the story, we know what sort of king we want him to be – and then things go badly wrong, he doesn’t give us what we wanted, and we are tempted to wonder if we’ve been standing on the wrong side of town, watching the wrong procession.

Jesus warned us this would happen: we all have to live through a Holy Week, a Gethsemane, a Good Friday of one sort or another. That happens in personal life, in vocational life, as well as in public life.

Read it all.

Palm Sunday 2018: A Fourth-Century Account of How Palm Sunday was Celebrated

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The following day, Sunday, marks the beginning of Holy Week, which they call here the Great Week. On this [Palm] Sunday morning, at the completion of those rites which are customarily celebrated at the Anastasis [the Lord’s tomb] or the Cross from the first cockcrow until dawn, everyone assembles for the liturgy according to custom in the major church, called the Martyrium. It is called the Martyrium because it is on Golgotha, behind the Cross, where the Lord suffered His Passion, and is therefore a shrine of martyrdom. As soon as everything has been celebrated in the major church as usual, but before the dismissal is given, the archdeacon raises his voice and first says: “Throughout this whole week, beginning tomorrow at the ninth hour [3pm], let us all gather in the Martyrium, in the major church.” Then he raises his voice a second time, saying: “Today let us all be ready to assemble at the seventh hour [1pm] at the Eleona.” When the dismissal has been given in the Martyrium or major church, the bishop is led to the accompaniment of hymns to the Anastasis, and there all ceremonies are accomplished which customarily take place every Sunday at the Anastasis [Church of the Holy Sepulcher] following the dismissal from the Martyrium. Then everyone retires home to eat hastily, so that at the beginning of the seventh hour everyone will be ready to assemble in the church on the Eleona, by which I mean the Mount of Olives, where the grotto in which the Lord taught is located.

At the seventh hour all the people go up to the church on the Mount of Olives, that is, to the Eleona. The bishop sits down, hymns and antiphons appropriate to the day and place are sung, and there are likewise readings from the Scriptures. As the ninth hour approaches, they move up, chanting hymns, to the Imbomon, that is, to the place from which the Lord ascended into heaven; and everyone sits down there. When the bishop is present, the people are always commanded to be seated, so that only the deacons remain standing. And there hymns and antiphons proper to the day and place are sung, interspersed with appropriate readings from the Scriptures and prayers.

As the eleventh hour [5pm] draws near, that particular passage from Scripture is read in which the children bearing palms and branches came forth to meet the Lord, saying: “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” The bishop and all the people rise immediately, and then everyone walks down from the top of the Mount of Olives, with the people preceding the bishop and responding continually with “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord” to the hymns and antiphons. All the children who are present here, including those who are not yet able to walk because they are too young and therefore are carried on their parents’ shoulders, all of them bear branches, some carrying palms, others olive branches. And the bishop is led in the same manner as the Lord once was led. From the top of the mountain as far as the city, and from there through the entire city as far as the Anastasis, everyone accompanies the bishop the whole way on foot, and this includes distinguished ladies and men of consequence, reciting the responses all the while; and they move very slowly so that the people will not tire. By the time they arrive at the Anastasis, it is already evening. Once they have arrived there, even though it is evening, vespers is celebrated; then a prayer is said at the Cross and the people are dismissed.

—Egeria, Abbess, Pilgrimage

Fr. Philip Sang: In Dying We Live

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Sermon delivered on Lent 5B, Sunday, March 18, 2018, at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH.

If you prefer to listen to the audio podcast of today’s sermon, click here.

Lectionary texts: Jeremiah 31.31-34; Psalm 51.1-13; Hebrews 5.5-10; John 12. 20-33.

There is something we do not talk about that Jesus is referring to today, Death. Yes, we acknowledge death when it happens but for the most part we do not talk about death with any real depth or substance, and certainly no enthusiasm. We don’t deal with it. We deny it. We ignore it. We avoid it. No one wants to die. If you can remember, I have mentioned here before about how death is viewed in my community, that when you mention death it is like calling for bad omen upon the family and whoever mentions it would be asked to renounce/take back/cancel what they just said.

We don’t really acknowledge, talk about, and deal with death. The death of our loved ones is too real, too painful. Our own death is too scary. The relationships and parts of our lives that have died are too difficult. So, for the most part, we just avoid the topic of death. Besides it’s a downer, depressing experience in a culture that mostly wants to be happy, feel good, and avoid difficult realities.

I suspect the Greeks in today’s gospel did not go expecting to talk or hear about death. They just want to see Jesus. Jesus has a pretty good track record up to this point. He has performed a lot of miracles. I don’t know why they wanted to see Jesus but I know the desire. I want to see Jesus. I believe you would as well. Seeing Jesus makes it all real. After all, seeing, they say, is believing. We all have our reasons for wanting to see Jesus.

If you want to know your reasons for wanting to see Jesus look at what you pray for. It is often a to do list for God. I remember, my son, every evening when we pray my son James would pray for what he wants for himself and for every member of the family and i just learned that it is our way of praying, a to do list for God. When our lives are in a mess we pray that God would fix it all.

You probably know those kind of prayers. We want to see Jesus on our terms. We don’t want to face the pain of loss and death in whatever form it comes. Sometimes we want something from Jesus more than we want Jesus himself. There is a real danger that we will become consumers of God’s life rather than participants in God’s life. We pick and choose what we like and want but we skip over and leave behind what we do not like, want, or understand. Christianity, however, is not like that. Christianity means participating in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is what Jesus sets before the Greeks who want to see him.

Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.

If we want to see Jesus then we must look death in the face. To the extent we refuse to acknowledge the reality of death, to the degree we avoid and deny death, we refuse to see Jesus. Really looking at, acknowledging, and facing death is some of the most difficult work we ever do. It is, as Jesus describes, soul troubling. It shakes us to the core.

There is a temptation to want to skip over death and get to resurrection. So it is no coincidence that this week and last week the Church points us towards Holy Week and reminds us that death is the gateway to new life. Death comes first. Death is not always, however, physical. Sometimes it is spiritual or emotional. We die a thousand deaths every day. There are the deaths of relationships, marriages, hopes, dreams, careers, health, beliefs. Regardless of what it looks like, this is not the end. Resurrection is always hidden within death. There can be, however, no resurrection without a death.

To the extent we avoid death we avoid life. The degree to which we are afraid to die is the degree to which we are afraid to fully live. Every time we avoid and turn away from death we proclaim it stronger than God, more real than life, and the ultimate victor.

Jesus did not ask to be saved from death. He is unwilling to settle for survival when the fullness of God’s life is before him. He knows that in God’s world strength is found in weakness, victory looks like defeat, and life is born of death. This is what allowed him to ride triumphantly into Jerusalem, a city that will condemn and kill him. That is what allows us to ride triumphantly through life. Triumph doesn’t mean that we get our way or that we avoid death. It means death is a gateway not a prison and the beginning not the end.

Regardless of who or what in our life has died, God in Christ has already cleared the way forward. We have a path to follow. That path is the death of Jesus. Jesus’ death, however, is of no benefit to us if we are not willing to submit to death, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Ultimately, death, in whatever way it comes to us, means that we entrust all that we are and all that we have to God. We let ourselves be lifted up; lifted up in Christ’s crucifixion, lifted up in his resurrection, lifted up in his ascension into heaven. He is drawing all people to himself, that where he is we too may be.

Grains of wheat. That is what we are. Through death, however, we can become the bread of life. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies….”

In the name of God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen