Proper 21 A 2011
Exodus 17: 1-7; Canticle 13; Phil 2: 1-13; Mt 21: 23-32
So the season turns, the days are now shorter than the nights. We feel the change—the equinox and its transition is bred into our very bones. I always feel a sense of sadness, a kind of middle-aged “emo” actually, combined with a tinge of buried dread. Have I prepared for this winter—the winter of actual cold as well as the winter of my soul?
This is the beginning of the harvest, when of old the work that was done in Spring and Summer is revealed as having been abundant, adequate, or thin. Churches customarily do their stewardship drives right now, to ask the question of the harvest of our spiritual lives in Christ? Did we sow thinly, keeping back seed, hedging our bets? Or did we sow abundantly, casting our care on God and taking a generous chance on Christ and on our life together in Christ’s Body?
From ancient days the church has put this time of year in the keeping of the archangel Michael and of the other angels. In our calendar they all share one single day, which is fine since Thomas Aquinas said they could all share the head of a pin if they wanted. Michael guards the equinox, the slow disappearance of the sun, and guards the harvest with his strong direct gaze and, sometimes, his scales in which he is charged with weighing souls in the balance. Michael is fair but Michael is known to be kind, and so might place a compassionate finger on one side of the scale if we’re found to be a bit light on the merit-side of things.
It is in light of this searching time, this time of reckoning and accountability, that Paul’s words strike at my heart:
“Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling…”
The questions are questions posed to each of us. The answers will look different for each of us, because the Kingdom of God is not a realm of robots. But there will be a contour and shape to our lives that we will hold in common, if we are struggling to live together in a way that reflects the Gospel.
The shape of that life is reflected in the readings today.
The people of Israel were thirsty in the desert. There’s really no surprise there. Just as in a church that struggles with a sense of need, conflict arose, people grumbled and complained, and they even turned on their leader, in this case Moses. The choice made by Moses makes all the difference. He does not turn around on the people and fight back with the same words. Moses turns instead to God. He dares to place his complaints at the feet of the One who has been with them. God instructs Moses to strike the rock, and water flows out. Many years later, the New Testament will tell us “And the rock was Christ.”
When we work out our salvation together amidst a sense of scarcity, we all, leaders and people, are to turn to God and place our needs at God’s feet. This may not be remembered as our finest moment as it was not for Israel, but it is a moment when we remember again that God is our redeemer.
Paul referred to this experience at Massah and Meribah because the early Church was not a community of sweetness and light, but one of squabbles and struggles. The stakes were higher than ours today—they were under direct threat from forces bigger than themselves, and they were trying to live a brand-new set of teachings. There was a lot of petty politics, what we would today call “drama”, and simple human meanness. In light of this Paul says, “Have the same mind in you as was in Christ…he did not grasp at divine identity, but he emptied himself like a cup turned upside down…he took the form of a slave…” We work out our salvation when we look on one another with humility and gratitude and love, and let the humble Christ reach out and serve one another, laying aside our need to be right and our need to be obeyed.
Jesus too knew the reality of living together, how people can posture and squabble and boast and play politics and walk away and even betray. Trying to forge a community in the midst of tensions between the old religious establishment, the “cradle Episcopalians” as it were, and the new rough-edged people joining his movement, he tells the take of two sons. One has the right words, “O yes sir, off I go!” but does nothing. The other says flatly, “Not me!” but goes off and does the work asked of him in the end. Who is doing the will of the Lord? Better a rough-edged blunt refusal, followed by a quiet serving, than a pious “Amen” with no intention of actually going to the trouble of living out those hard Gospel demands. Today we might say that “the eco-hipsters and agnostic activists are getting into the Kingdom ahead of the church-people.” We work out our salvation when, no matter what we do or do not say with our mouths, or how we dress or what kind of music we like, we do what people reflecting the Gospel do.
This time of year reflects the harvest of the earth and of our lives. The great archangel gazes upon the truth of how we have lived. It is a merciful thing that we are re-reminded of what the harvest of our lives is meant to show if we take on ourselves the name of Christ. Turn in confidence to God, put aside petty ambition, serve humbly as Christ served, walk our talk or else don’t even talk the talk—that’s the contour of lives where we are working out our salvation with fear and trembling. There’s room for lots of variety within those contours, but the end is a life we live together, where people can hear and see an echo and reflection of the life and teaching of our Master.
archived musings and preachments
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Sunday, September 18, 2011
All we have
Holy Cross/”Capacity Crowd” Sunday 2011
Isaiah 45:21-25; Psalm 98:1-4; Gal 6: 14-18; John 12:31-36a
Years ago in Chicago, Diane and I hung out with a large network of renegade Mennonites and recovering evangelicals. Since I was somewhere in the process of becoming an ex-Roman Catholic, we fit in well. We’d meet in bars and other places and talk faith and God and doubt and life. Once one of our friends named Liz asked me, “Why do you stick with the Christian thing, anyway? What’s so compelling about Christianity?”
I thought hard and, after a long silence, replied “Because I think that the crucified Christ is at the heart of the world and at the heart of all reality.”
“What does that mean?” Liz persisted.
I think I stammered, and I must not have said anything memorable since I cannot remember what I said.
I do not think I can explain myself any better today. But I would still answer Liz’s question the same way. I believe that at the heart of the world, at the heart of all reality, is the crucified Christ.
Today’s feast is a six-month warm-up for Holy Week. But it is not like Good Friday with darkness and grief. Holy Cross Day is a shout of joy born from the heart of God. Today we remember our spiritual hungers and our questions of mind and soul. Today we re-kindle our wonder as we gaze upon the One whose arms are flung wide on the hard wood of the cross. There may not be many answers available today. But there is a re-kindling of passion in the soul, and there is aching, aching gratitude. Today we know that we are known, we are loved, that God has reached across the divide of sin and sorrow and pain and emptiness with one extravagant, passionate gesture. Jesus Christ is with us and for us, now and completely and always. All our seeking, all our searching, all our longing, all our sorrows and emptiness as well as our joy and our peace are found in this one figure, the one who, “when lifted up, draws all people to himself.” We look up from our modern desert to the One on the Cross for healing, for meaning, for hope, for peace, for new life.
And we do not just look up. We pray that “we, who glory in the mystery of our redemption, may have grace to take up our cross and follow him.”
That’s what catches me. I am not interested in proving a doctrine or an idea about God or Jesus. I am not interested in putting my questions or even my doubts to sleep with easy answers. I am interested in exploring how God’s astounding action in Jesus points out a way of life and meaning and transformation. I am interested in living this astounding, ancient, but always brand-new vision with others who have also been drawn and fascinated and set on fire.
If we wish to embrace Jesus, then we need to follow Jesus. If we wish to know Jesus, then we must discover and live what Jesus taught and loved. If we wish to be transformed, then we must travel with the ragged band of pilgrims who have been called and fascinated and healed and set on fire. That’s what a church is—those who have been marked and claimed by the Crucified One who lives.
The Holy Cross and the Crucified One sets their seal on us as we start another season of serving and seeking.
Just as I did not have any explanations beyond the crucified Christ years ago, I do not have many explanations or many detailed plans for us today. I used to approach this time of year with an invisible clipboard in hand, ready to map out the year’s cruise activities. Instead, I have Jesus Christ and him crucified. I trust him to open our ears and our hearts and to kindle hope.
We have every reason to be confident and hopeful. Look around and see the fellow-pilgrims that Jesus has called together. We are God’s gifts to one another, to comfort and to challenge one another.
We are a community which has been blessed with rich traditions of faith, be they Anglo-Catholic or Celtic or Hispanic or just plain ol’ Episcopal with our different backgrounds added. There is richness and gift in all of these traditions. What matters is to be together in faith before the Crucified Jesus and to listen for his voice. He is enough, and he will tell us what we need to do and to be.
Here are my hopes for this year…
First, I hope that we join in prayer that God in Jesus will speak to us and to renew us in the way that he wills. I hope that we gather in prayer, whether privately or in community, and ask God to work the divine will and joy in us.
I hope that we seek ways to grow in the practices that help us follow Jesus. I hope we find ways that make sense for us in our changing world and our demanding, time-challenged lives to do that. The conversation this Tuesday evening at Tamara’s is part of exploring that. I hope that we can be a congregation that teaches and supports people in the practices that make following Jesus real.
I hope that we gather more. I understand that we all consider ourselves time-poor, that work and family make fierce demands on us. I understand that we face many challenges, be they health or finance or other concerns. I also understand that our surrounding culture is not sympathetic with Sunday as a day to practice regular worship. Life in “Portlandia” tells us that our individual lives are private projects and that weekends are precious personal time. It is counter-cultural to regularly gather with others for weekly worship—your friends may describe you as “really into church.” But it is needful to simply gather in order to live a strong and supple Christian life. After ten years of martial arts, I understand Sunday gathering as spiritual exercise class. When one goes to exercise class rarely or not at all, one’s practice gets awkward and one is always starting from the beginning. And like a martial arts class, the class is better if there are more students gathered for mutual support and to challenge us to be the best we can be. We are stronger when we are together.
I hope we learn again how blessed our lives are and how everything we are and have are pure gift and how, if we give gladly and joyously, we are set free and come that much closer to the One who gave us his very self. “All things come of Thee, O Lord, and of Thine own have we given Thee.” We shall sing and say this all through this Fall, ancient words, words first spoken by King David when faced with building a temple and a kingdom. We are building a life, a rich life in Christ.
In an age when everything is changing for organized church, when we are faced with so many challenges, when the struggles of the church are matched by the struggles of our own lives and those of our neighbors, I have few answers. I only offer what the feast and the Scripture give us today. We have the Crucified One who lives with us and for us, and who is at the heart of all that is.
Isaiah 45:21-25; Psalm 98:1-4; Gal 6: 14-18; John 12:31-36a
Years ago in Chicago, Diane and I hung out with a large network of renegade Mennonites and recovering evangelicals. Since I was somewhere in the process of becoming an ex-Roman Catholic, we fit in well. We’d meet in bars and other places and talk faith and God and doubt and life. Once one of our friends named Liz asked me, “Why do you stick with the Christian thing, anyway? What’s so compelling about Christianity?”
I thought hard and, after a long silence, replied “Because I think that the crucified Christ is at the heart of the world and at the heart of all reality.”
“What does that mean?” Liz persisted.
I think I stammered, and I must not have said anything memorable since I cannot remember what I said.
I do not think I can explain myself any better today. But I would still answer Liz’s question the same way. I believe that at the heart of the world, at the heart of all reality, is the crucified Christ.
Today’s feast is a six-month warm-up for Holy Week. But it is not like Good Friday with darkness and grief. Holy Cross Day is a shout of joy born from the heart of God. Today we remember our spiritual hungers and our questions of mind and soul. Today we re-kindle our wonder as we gaze upon the One whose arms are flung wide on the hard wood of the cross. There may not be many answers available today. But there is a re-kindling of passion in the soul, and there is aching, aching gratitude. Today we know that we are known, we are loved, that God has reached across the divide of sin and sorrow and pain and emptiness with one extravagant, passionate gesture. Jesus Christ is with us and for us, now and completely and always. All our seeking, all our searching, all our longing, all our sorrows and emptiness as well as our joy and our peace are found in this one figure, the one who, “when lifted up, draws all people to himself.” We look up from our modern desert to the One on the Cross for healing, for meaning, for hope, for peace, for new life.
And we do not just look up. We pray that “we, who glory in the mystery of our redemption, may have grace to take up our cross and follow him.”
That’s what catches me. I am not interested in proving a doctrine or an idea about God or Jesus. I am not interested in putting my questions or even my doubts to sleep with easy answers. I am interested in exploring how God’s astounding action in Jesus points out a way of life and meaning and transformation. I am interested in living this astounding, ancient, but always brand-new vision with others who have also been drawn and fascinated and set on fire.
If we wish to embrace Jesus, then we need to follow Jesus. If we wish to know Jesus, then we must discover and live what Jesus taught and loved. If we wish to be transformed, then we must travel with the ragged band of pilgrims who have been called and fascinated and healed and set on fire. That’s what a church is—those who have been marked and claimed by the Crucified One who lives.
The Holy Cross and the Crucified One sets their seal on us as we start another season of serving and seeking.
Just as I did not have any explanations beyond the crucified Christ years ago, I do not have many explanations or many detailed plans for us today. I used to approach this time of year with an invisible clipboard in hand, ready to map out the year’s cruise activities. Instead, I have Jesus Christ and him crucified. I trust him to open our ears and our hearts and to kindle hope.
We have every reason to be confident and hopeful. Look around and see the fellow-pilgrims that Jesus has called together. We are God’s gifts to one another, to comfort and to challenge one another.
We are a community which has been blessed with rich traditions of faith, be they Anglo-Catholic or Celtic or Hispanic or just plain ol’ Episcopal with our different backgrounds added. There is richness and gift in all of these traditions. What matters is to be together in faith before the Crucified Jesus and to listen for his voice. He is enough, and he will tell us what we need to do and to be.
Here are my hopes for this year…
First, I hope that we join in prayer that God in Jesus will speak to us and to renew us in the way that he wills. I hope that we gather in prayer, whether privately or in community, and ask God to work the divine will and joy in us.
I hope that we seek ways to grow in the practices that help us follow Jesus. I hope we find ways that make sense for us in our changing world and our demanding, time-challenged lives to do that. The conversation this Tuesday evening at Tamara’s is part of exploring that. I hope that we can be a congregation that teaches and supports people in the practices that make following Jesus real.
I hope that we gather more. I understand that we all consider ourselves time-poor, that work and family make fierce demands on us. I understand that we face many challenges, be they health or finance or other concerns. I also understand that our surrounding culture is not sympathetic with Sunday as a day to practice regular worship. Life in “Portlandia” tells us that our individual lives are private projects and that weekends are precious personal time. It is counter-cultural to regularly gather with others for weekly worship—your friends may describe you as “really into church.” But it is needful to simply gather in order to live a strong and supple Christian life. After ten years of martial arts, I understand Sunday gathering as spiritual exercise class. When one goes to exercise class rarely or not at all, one’s practice gets awkward and one is always starting from the beginning. And like a martial arts class, the class is better if there are more students gathered for mutual support and to challenge us to be the best we can be. We are stronger when we are together.
I hope we learn again how blessed our lives are and how everything we are and have are pure gift and how, if we give gladly and joyously, we are set free and come that much closer to the One who gave us his very self. “All things come of Thee, O Lord, and of Thine own have we given Thee.” We shall sing and say this all through this Fall, ancient words, words first spoken by King David when faced with building a temple and a kingdom. We are building a life, a rich life in Christ.
In an age when everything is changing for organized church, when we are faced with so many challenges, when the struggles of the church are matched by the struggles of our own lives and those of our neighbors, I have few answers. I only offer what the feast and the Scripture give us today. We have the Crucified One who lives with us and for us, and who is at the heart of all that is.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Forgive
September 11, 2011
Gen 50: 15-21; Ps 114; Rom 14: 1-12; Mt 18: 21-35
The energy behind the 10th anniversary of the 2001 attacks took me by surprise.
Like most churches, we responded to the attacks with special services, welcoming those who sought a church for comfort in those days. We even held a one-year anniversary concert, and if memory serves we did something on the second anniversary. It was pretty plain by then that people were done, that attention had been fixed with a sense of dread and great controversy on the war that seemed to march on us whether we raised our voices in protest or not. In the years since 9/11 so much has happened that has felt out of our control—war and occupation in two nations, increasingly bitter partisan politics with little co-operation between the sides, deepening economic fear and suffering for more and more people.
Remembrance is important, the stories of the famous and the ordinary who lived, and those who died, need to be told. They need to be given their names. But in addition to sorrow and grief and remembrance are deeper, darker truths. I find people speaking with a sense of loss about the “innocence” of life before 9/11. For some, the ‘90’s are remembered as a sort of innocent golden age, when money flowed freely and we were unafraid and the most interesting thing happening was the clumsy sexual escapade of a president and an intern. We do love tales of a lost paradise—those with longer memories, or whose lives here or overseas did not reflect this nostalgic vision, do not think there was much innocence or safety to be lost.
Now we speak of fear. “Terrorism’s next move” announces today’s headlines. And we live with unease about what happened next, what we thought and what we did. An upsurge of racism and prejudice against anyone Middle Eastern or Islamic in our midst, rage and the deep need to see someone else suffer because we had suffered, we had lost, we were now afraid. Somewhere in our home we have a photo magazine feature published shortly after the attacks. The pictures are beautiful, terrifying or horrifying or heart-breaking or inspiring images of the dead or the heroic living or the impossible images of jet liners flying into the buildings that were colossal symbols of power and invulnerability. But after all the moving, powerful photos, the last page is for me the most memorable. It depicts two jet fighters flying in close formation, silvery and deadly. The caption below says simply, “Vengeance.”
The composers of the book were more right than they knew. I think a great deal of what we struggle to come to terms with is what happened in the days and weeks and months and years after that iconic day in September. Lands were bombed and invaded, blood was spilled on both sides. Much of that blood was innocent, families and children like our own who were trying to live until the flash of the missile or the gun. I do not stand here ready to open arguments about whether Afghanistan should have been invaded, whether Iraq should have been invaded and occupied, let alone the morality of the “robust interrogation tactics” practiced on those captured.
What matters today is all of that happened. The post-9/11 world in which we live is one of greater unease and fear, greater uncertainty, the knowledge that in this world there are those who will strike at us and call it just. And the post-9/11 world is one in which we know ourselves to be capable of rage and vengeance and the willingness to deal out pain and death in return.
How does a church commemorate such a day?
We bring all this truth to the feet of Jesus and listen for what Jesus has to say.
Today’s Gospel is a playful but stern tale of the power of forgiveness—God’s forgiveness and humanity’s capacity to withhold forgiveness. One man owes an impossible sum—10,000 talents meant this guy was a corporate raider, a Ponzi scheme-level thief. He asks for impossible mercy, and an impossibly merciful lord gives it to him. A fellow-servant owes the equivalent of a few month’s working-class wages, nothing compared to that first staggering debt. The first servant does what the law allows—has him thrown into jail.
The law may allow this, a sense of justice may allow this, but this is not a story of law and justice. This is a story of impossible mercy and forgiveness, and how astoundingly short we fall of the lord’s kindness. “So it will happen to you, unless you forgive from the heart.” We the church gather around to listen to Jesus, and this is what Jesus says—forgive, even the colossal kind of debt. Who knows—perhaps the one you forgive feels we owe the same sort of debt ourselves.
The Gospel is stern today. It is the Old Testament that holds out hope.
Joseph could have revenged himself on his brothers who abused him and sold him as a slave. Once their father was dead, there was really nothing to stand in his way. But the greatest miracle of the book of Genesis, with its floods and creation and fires from heaven, is in this moment. Joseph, with all the power of Egypt at his command, chooses another path. “Am I in the place of God?” Forgiveness and a new future opens for everyone in that room, fear and grudges are put aside, and the chain of events that will lead one day to the birth of the Savior is set in motion.
“Am I in the place of God?” Justice and the knowledge of the right thing to do in fearful, confusing times are not in our hands. The fear and rage of this age may be around us, and it is in us. But freedom in Christ is possible and offered to us today. Each of us are debtors to God’s mercy. We are not in the place of God. But we are given the Godly power and command to put an end to the fearful, rage-filled ways of this world. “Forgive” is the one word that churches can and must bring to the table today.
A wise man said, “Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.”*
*Paul Boese, as quoted by Rob Voyle in “Appreciative Inquiry Newsletter”
Gen 50: 15-21; Ps 114; Rom 14: 1-12; Mt 18: 21-35
The energy behind the 10th anniversary of the 2001 attacks took me by surprise.
Like most churches, we responded to the attacks with special services, welcoming those who sought a church for comfort in those days. We even held a one-year anniversary concert, and if memory serves we did something on the second anniversary. It was pretty plain by then that people were done, that attention had been fixed with a sense of dread and great controversy on the war that seemed to march on us whether we raised our voices in protest or not. In the years since 9/11 so much has happened that has felt out of our control—war and occupation in two nations, increasingly bitter partisan politics with little co-operation between the sides, deepening economic fear and suffering for more and more people.
Remembrance is important, the stories of the famous and the ordinary who lived, and those who died, need to be told. They need to be given their names. But in addition to sorrow and grief and remembrance are deeper, darker truths. I find people speaking with a sense of loss about the “innocence” of life before 9/11. For some, the ‘90’s are remembered as a sort of innocent golden age, when money flowed freely and we were unafraid and the most interesting thing happening was the clumsy sexual escapade of a president and an intern. We do love tales of a lost paradise—those with longer memories, or whose lives here or overseas did not reflect this nostalgic vision, do not think there was much innocence or safety to be lost.
Now we speak of fear. “Terrorism’s next move” announces today’s headlines. And we live with unease about what happened next, what we thought and what we did. An upsurge of racism and prejudice against anyone Middle Eastern or Islamic in our midst, rage and the deep need to see someone else suffer because we had suffered, we had lost, we were now afraid. Somewhere in our home we have a photo magazine feature published shortly after the attacks. The pictures are beautiful, terrifying or horrifying or heart-breaking or inspiring images of the dead or the heroic living or the impossible images of jet liners flying into the buildings that were colossal symbols of power and invulnerability. But after all the moving, powerful photos, the last page is for me the most memorable. It depicts two jet fighters flying in close formation, silvery and deadly. The caption below says simply, “Vengeance.”
The composers of the book were more right than they knew. I think a great deal of what we struggle to come to terms with is what happened in the days and weeks and months and years after that iconic day in September. Lands were bombed and invaded, blood was spilled on both sides. Much of that blood was innocent, families and children like our own who were trying to live until the flash of the missile or the gun. I do not stand here ready to open arguments about whether Afghanistan should have been invaded, whether Iraq should have been invaded and occupied, let alone the morality of the “robust interrogation tactics” practiced on those captured.
What matters today is all of that happened. The post-9/11 world in which we live is one of greater unease and fear, greater uncertainty, the knowledge that in this world there are those who will strike at us and call it just. And the post-9/11 world is one in which we know ourselves to be capable of rage and vengeance and the willingness to deal out pain and death in return.
How does a church commemorate such a day?
We bring all this truth to the feet of Jesus and listen for what Jesus has to say.
Today’s Gospel is a playful but stern tale of the power of forgiveness—God’s forgiveness and humanity’s capacity to withhold forgiveness. One man owes an impossible sum—10,000 talents meant this guy was a corporate raider, a Ponzi scheme-level thief. He asks for impossible mercy, and an impossibly merciful lord gives it to him. A fellow-servant owes the equivalent of a few month’s working-class wages, nothing compared to that first staggering debt. The first servant does what the law allows—has him thrown into jail.
The law may allow this, a sense of justice may allow this, but this is not a story of law and justice. This is a story of impossible mercy and forgiveness, and how astoundingly short we fall of the lord’s kindness. “So it will happen to you, unless you forgive from the heart.” We the church gather around to listen to Jesus, and this is what Jesus says—forgive, even the colossal kind of debt. Who knows—perhaps the one you forgive feels we owe the same sort of debt ourselves.
The Gospel is stern today. It is the Old Testament that holds out hope.
Joseph could have revenged himself on his brothers who abused him and sold him as a slave. Once their father was dead, there was really nothing to stand in his way. But the greatest miracle of the book of Genesis, with its floods and creation and fires from heaven, is in this moment. Joseph, with all the power of Egypt at his command, chooses another path. “Am I in the place of God?” Forgiveness and a new future opens for everyone in that room, fear and grudges are put aside, and the chain of events that will lead one day to the birth of the Savior is set in motion.
“Am I in the place of God?” Justice and the knowledge of the right thing to do in fearful, confusing times are not in our hands. The fear and rage of this age may be around us, and it is in us. But freedom in Christ is possible and offered to us today. Each of us are debtors to God’s mercy. We are not in the place of God. But we are given the Godly power and command to put an end to the fearful, rage-filled ways of this world. “Forgive” is the one word that churches can and must bring to the table today.
A wise man said, “Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.”*
*Paul Boese, as quoted by Rob Voyle in “Appreciative Inquiry Newsletter”
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Christ our Passover
Proper 19 A 2011
Exodus 12:1-14; Psalm 149; Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 18:15-20
Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts; for, as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so you never forsake those who make their boast of your mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Sunday after Sunday, right before receiving Communion, we recite “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us/Therefore let us keep the feast.” We probably do not pay a lot of attention to the words, as we go into Episcopalian automatic pilot. At this deeply sacred moment in our liturgy, why do we remember the Passover?
A full answer to that would easily make up a graduate course and probably a lifetime of reflection. Rivers of ink have been spilled on this deep truth, both in the Bible itself and also in century upon century of commentary. But today we hear the story, the moment of the feast itself that we remember.
We have heard the story before. It is a tale filled with real danger. Slaves under brutal captors dream a wild and impossible dream—freedom. A people divided and broken as abused people become are told to gather as one. And they are made one—by the merciful yet dreadful judgment of a mysterious God who comes out of their deep past to make himself shockingly present and inescapably contemporary. The divine judgment is being uncorked against the complacency and prosperity and self-sufficiency of a great empire, an empire that trusts its gods to make the river rise and fall and to keep the harvest flowing and business humming and everyone in their proper place. The divine judgment will upset business as usual to its very core. The face of the divine Wisdom, says a later commentator, will smile gently upon the enslaved and the forgotten yet turn with a warrior’s snarl upon the powerful.
So do this, you who trust in the divine mercy. Gather as a people. Prepare this feast which has no fancy trimming, no elaborate appetizers or dessert. Keep your coat on and your knapsacks by your chairs. If your neighbor does not have one of these special, sacred lambs, these gentle animals which are suddenly charged with a sense of the Holy, then share. You are moving from darkness to light, from slavery to freedom. In one meal you will remember your need for the divine mercy and how deep that mercy is. In the symbols of roasted lamb eaten whole, in bitter herbs and in bread baked quickly without yeast, really tortillas cooked up on an open stove, you will remember the slavery and the yearning and the cost paid by an innocent animal and the cost paid by a God who breaks the divine heart in setting us free. You will realize how lucky, how blessed you are to eat this meal. You will realize you are a people together on a desert journey, a people traveling from darkness to light, a people whole and together wholly dependent on the mercy of God.
And so Saint Paul taught us, centuries later, to say “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us/Therefore let us keep the feast.” Christ is the lamb. The church is the gathered people. There is slavery outside of us and slavery within us. Hear the summons, gather under the merciful eye of God, eat this simple hasty meal. And when you do, become one people and become the spotless lamb, the Lamb of God. Walk the journey from darkness to light.
The Old Testament tells us the story. The New Testament tells us how to live the story. We hear how to be this people for whom Christ is our Passover.
Jesus in the Gospel speaks very plainly and practically about how to deal with conflict in the community, conflict in the church. One commentator tells how this text might read today with responses that are all too familiar. “If your brother sins against you, then…” Smile and pretend it didn’t hurt, but never forget it and wait for a chance to get them back. Go home and complain to your family and friends and gossip about that other person for days weeks. Send them a nasty e-mail venting all your anger and cc/ the rector. De-friend them on Facebook. Or start to withdraw from the church, maybe even leave the church and look for another church where the members never sin against one another.
That’s a pretty common strategy “out there”, and all too often we act a lot more like “out there” than as citizens of the Kingdom. Through the years I have come close to despair at the difficulty we church-people have in living together and working things out in the light of the Gospel. Because the Way of Jesus, the way of the Passover, is a different way, a way from the slavery of resentment and retaliation to a new place of healing and freedom. According to Jesus, it is very practical. “Go talk to them alone”—respect their privacy and give them a chance for reconciliation. “Take one or two others”—again a chance to heal the wound in a discreet way. “Go to the church”—because the division of two members is a division for us all. We have been called to freedom by God’s mercy together; this is not a solo journey. “Treat them as a tax collector…” and the story does not end there. A wise old priest once reminded me, “Remember what we do with tax collectors and sinners? We search them out and forgive them.” For the promise of Jesus at the end of the tale is solemn and not given only for our comfort, but also for our challenge. “Where two or three are gathered, there am I in your midst.” The merciful yet awesome God of the Passover is among us—it is up to us to choose to be the gathered people of God, waiting for the divine mercy, saved by the blood of the innocent victim, or people who belong to slavery and to power. We can stay in the darkness of the weary dynamics of slavery and oppression, including slavery to our selves, or we can learn to walk free.
This is what we choose when we say, “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us/Therefore let us keep the feast.”
Exodus 12:1-14; Psalm 149; Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 18:15-20
Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts; for, as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so you never forsake those who make their boast of your mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Sunday after Sunday, right before receiving Communion, we recite “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us/Therefore let us keep the feast.” We probably do not pay a lot of attention to the words, as we go into Episcopalian automatic pilot. At this deeply sacred moment in our liturgy, why do we remember the Passover?
A full answer to that would easily make up a graduate course and probably a lifetime of reflection. Rivers of ink have been spilled on this deep truth, both in the Bible itself and also in century upon century of commentary. But today we hear the story, the moment of the feast itself that we remember.
We have heard the story before. It is a tale filled with real danger. Slaves under brutal captors dream a wild and impossible dream—freedom. A people divided and broken as abused people become are told to gather as one. And they are made one—by the merciful yet dreadful judgment of a mysterious God who comes out of their deep past to make himself shockingly present and inescapably contemporary. The divine judgment is being uncorked against the complacency and prosperity and self-sufficiency of a great empire, an empire that trusts its gods to make the river rise and fall and to keep the harvest flowing and business humming and everyone in their proper place. The divine judgment will upset business as usual to its very core. The face of the divine Wisdom, says a later commentator, will smile gently upon the enslaved and the forgotten yet turn with a warrior’s snarl upon the powerful.
So do this, you who trust in the divine mercy. Gather as a people. Prepare this feast which has no fancy trimming, no elaborate appetizers or dessert. Keep your coat on and your knapsacks by your chairs. If your neighbor does not have one of these special, sacred lambs, these gentle animals which are suddenly charged with a sense of the Holy, then share. You are moving from darkness to light, from slavery to freedom. In one meal you will remember your need for the divine mercy and how deep that mercy is. In the symbols of roasted lamb eaten whole, in bitter herbs and in bread baked quickly without yeast, really tortillas cooked up on an open stove, you will remember the slavery and the yearning and the cost paid by an innocent animal and the cost paid by a God who breaks the divine heart in setting us free. You will realize how lucky, how blessed you are to eat this meal. You will realize you are a people together on a desert journey, a people traveling from darkness to light, a people whole and together wholly dependent on the mercy of God.
And so Saint Paul taught us, centuries later, to say “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us/Therefore let us keep the feast.” Christ is the lamb. The church is the gathered people. There is slavery outside of us and slavery within us. Hear the summons, gather under the merciful eye of God, eat this simple hasty meal. And when you do, become one people and become the spotless lamb, the Lamb of God. Walk the journey from darkness to light.
The Old Testament tells us the story. The New Testament tells us how to live the story. We hear how to be this people for whom Christ is our Passover.
Jesus in the Gospel speaks very plainly and practically about how to deal with conflict in the community, conflict in the church. One commentator tells how this text might read today with responses that are all too familiar. “If your brother sins against you, then…” Smile and pretend it didn’t hurt, but never forget it and wait for a chance to get them back. Go home and complain to your family and friends and gossip about that other person for days weeks. Send them a nasty e-mail venting all your anger and cc/ the rector. De-friend them on Facebook. Or start to withdraw from the church, maybe even leave the church and look for another church where the members never sin against one another.
That’s a pretty common strategy “out there”, and all too often we act a lot more like “out there” than as citizens of the Kingdom. Through the years I have come close to despair at the difficulty we church-people have in living together and working things out in the light of the Gospel. Because the Way of Jesus, the way of the Passover, is a different way, a way from the slavery of resentment and retaliation to a new place of healing and freedom. According to Jesus, it is very practical. “Go talk to them alone”—respect their privacy and give them a chance for reconciliation. “Take one or two others”—again a chance to heal the wound in a discreet way. “Go to the church”—because the division of two members is a division for us all. We have been called to freedom by God’s mercy together; this is not a solo journey. “Treat them as a tax collector…” and the story does not end there. A wise old priest once reminded me, “Remember what we do with tax collectors and sinners? We search them out and forgive them.” For the promise of Jesus at the end of the tale is solemn and not given only for our comfort, but also for our challenge. “Where two or three are gathered, there am I in your midst.” The merciful yet awesome God of the Passover is among us—it is up to us to choose to be the gathered people of God, waiting for the divine mercy, saved by the blood of the innocent victim, or people who belong to slavery and to power. We can stay in the darkness of the weary dynamics of slavery and oppression, including slavery to our selves, or we can learn to walk free.
This is what we choose when we say, “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us/Therefore let us keep the feast.”
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